Moral. What then is unclean? Sin, malice, covetousness, wickedness. [1480] As it is written: "Wash you, make you clean, put away the evil of your doings." (Isa. i. 16.) "Create in me a clean heart, O God." (Ps. li. 10.) "Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing." (Isa. lii. 52.) These observances were emblems of purifications. [1481] "Touch not a dead body," it is said. For sin is such, it is dead and offensive. "The leper is unclean." For sin is a leprosy, various and multiform. And that they had this meaning, appears from what follows. For if the leprosy is general, and overspreads the whole body, he is clean; if it is partial, he is unclean. Thus you see that what is various and changeable is the unclean thing. He again whose seed passes from him is unclean, consider one that is so in soul, casting away his seed. He who is uncircumcised is unclean. These things are not allegorical [1482] but typical, for he who does not cut off the wickedness of his heart is the unclean person. He who worketh on the Sabbath is to be stoned, that is, he who is not at all times devoted to God, shall perish. [1483] You see how many varieties of uncleanness there are. The woman in child-bed is unclean. Yet God made child-birth, and the seed of copulation. Why then is the woman unclean, unless something further was intimated? And what was this? He intended to produce piety in the soul, and to deter it from fornication. For if she is unclean who has borne a child, much more she who has committed fornication. If to approach his own wife is not altogether pure, much less to have intercourse with the wife of another. He who attends a funeral is unclean, much more he who has mixed in war and slaughter. And many kinds of uncleanness would be found, if it were necessary to recount them all. But these things are not now required of us. But all is transferred to the soul.
For bodily things are nearer to us, from these therefore he introduced instruction. But it is not so now. For we ought not to be confined to figures, and shadows, but to adhere to the truth, and to uphold it: sin is the unclean thing. From that let us flee, from that let us abstain. "If thou comest near it, it will bite [1484] thee." (Ecclus. xxi. 2.) Nothing is more unclean than covetousness. Whence is this manifest? From the facts themselves. For what does it not defile? the hands, the soul, the very house where the ill-gotten treasure is laid up. But the Jews consider this as nothing. And yet Moses carried off the bones of Joseph. Samson drank from the jawbone of an ass, and ate honey from the lion, and Elijah was nourished by ravens, and by a widow woman. And tell me, if we were to be precise about these things, what can be more unclean than our books, which are made of the skins of animals? The fornicator, then, is not the only one that is unclean, but others more than he, as the adulterer. But both the one and the other are unclean, not on account of the intercourse, (for according to that reasoning a man cohabiting with his own wife would be unclean,) but because of the wickedness of the act, and the injury done to his neighbor in his nearest interests. Dost thou see that it is wickedness that is unclean? He who had two wives was not unclean, and David who had many wives was not unclean. But when he had one unlawfully, he became unclean. Why? Because he had injured and defrauded his neighbor. And the fornicator is not unclean on account of the intercourse, but on account of the manner of it, because it injures the woman, and they injure one another, making the woman common, and subverting the laws of nature. For she ought to be the wife of one man, since it is said, "Male and female created He them." (Gen. i. 27.) And, "they twain shall be one flesh." Not "those many," but "they twain shall be one flesh." Here then is injustice, and therefore the act is wicked. Again, when anger exceeds due measure, it makes a man unclean, not in itself, but because of its excess. Since it is not said, "He that is angry," merely, but "angry without a cause." Thus every way to desire overmuch is unclean, for it proceeds from a greedy and irrational disposition. Let us therefore be sober, I beseech you, let us be pure, in that which is real purity, that we may be thought worthy to see God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, with whom, &c.
[1471] The words here quoted are found in Callimachus, Hymn ad Jov. v. 8, to whom Theodoret ascribes them. The "evil beasts," &c., is found in Hesiod, Theogon. v. 26, applied to shepherds. Downes suggested that Epimenides may have borrowed from Hesiod, and Callimachus from him.
[1472] He seems to mean in thinking Jupiter a God.
[1473] i.e. by Saul. 1 Sam. xxviii. 8.
[1474] This word seems to refer to the time when the opinions were allowed to prevail.
[1475] See on Stat. Hom. xvii.
[1476] i.e. heathen fables.
[1477] elaphos.
[1478] B. "none of these things is unclean."
[1479] al. "the notion," huponoia, and so B.; it is better than aponoia.
[1480] Sav. "fornication," but poneria is repeated in the next quotation, and has most authority.
[1481] al. "of uncleannesses."
[1482] This hardly makes sense. Read aletheia for allegoria. "These things are not truth, but types," which is his usual way of speaking. Just above, Savile's text is followed.
[1483] See on Stat. Hom. xii., where it appears that he does not exclude a reference to the Lord's Day.
[1484] Sav. dexetai, which reading Ben. unaccountably neglects, having dexetai, and in Lat. suscipiet.