Chapter XII—Of the Need for Some Protest Against the Psychics and Their Self-Indulgence.

For, by this time, in this respect as well as others, “you are reigning in wealth and satiety”90    1 Cor. iv. 8.—not making inroads upon such sins as fasts diminish, nor feeling need of such revelations as xerophagies extort, nor apprehending such wars of your own as Stations dispel.  Grant that from the time of John the Paraclete had grown mute; we ourselves would have arisen as prophets to ourselves, for this cause chiefly:  I say not now to bring down by our prayers God’s anger, nor to obtain his protection or grace; but to secure by premunition the moral position of the “latest times;”91    See the Vulg. in 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2; 2 Tim. iii. 1; and comp. therewith the Greek in both places. enjoining every species of ταπεινοφρόνησις, since the prison must be familiarized to us, and hunger and thirst practised, and capacity of enduring as well the absence of food as anxiety about it acquired:  in order that the Christian may enter into prison in like condition as if he had (just) come forth of it,—to suffer there not penalty, but discipline, and not the world’s tortures, but his own habitual observances; and to go forth out of custody to (the final) conflict with all the more confidence, having nothing of sinful false care of the flesh about him, so that the tortures may not even have material to work on, since he is cuirassed in a mere dry skin, and cased in horn to meet the claws, the succulence of his blood already sent on (heavenward) before him, the baggage as it were of his soul,—the soul herself withal now hastening (after it), having already, by frequent fasting, gained a most intimate knowledge of death!

Plainly, your habit is to furnish cookshops in the prisons to untrustworthy martyrs, for fear they should miss their accustomed usages, grow weary of life, (and) be stumbled at the novel discipline of abstinence; (a discipline) which not even the well-known Pristinus—your martyr, no Christian martyr—had ever come in contact with:  he whom—stuffed as he had long been, thanks to the facilities afforded by the “free custody” (now in vogue, and) under an obligation, I suppose, to all the baths (as if they were better than baptism!), and to all the retreats of voluptuousness (as if they were more secret than those of the Church!), and to all the allurements of this life (as if they were of more worth than those of life eternal!), not to be willing to die—on the very last day of trial, at high noon, you premedicated with drugged wine as an antidote, and so completely enervated, that on being tickled—for his intoxication made it feel like tickling—with a few claws, he was unable any more to make answer to the presiding officer interrogating him “whom he confessed to be Lord;” and, being now put on the rack for this silence, when he could utter nothing but hiccoughs and belchings, died in the very act of apostasy!  This is why they who preach sobriety are “false prophets;” this why they who practise it are “heretics!”  Why then hesitate to believe that the Paraclete, whom you deny in a Montanus, exists in an Apicius?

CAPUT XII.

Jam enim et in ista specie ditati saturatique regnatis0970A (I Cor., IV, 8), non delicta incusantes, quae jejuniis elimentur, nec revelationum scientia indigentes, quae xerophagiis extorqueantur, nec bella propria metuentes, quae stationibus discutiantur. Ut ab Joanne Paricletus obmutuisset, ipsi nobis Prophetae in hanc maxime caussam extitissemus: jam non dico ad exorandam Dei iram, nec ad impetrandam tutelam ejus aut gratiam, sed ad praemuniendam per nosmetipsos novissimorum temporum conditionem, indicentes omnem ταπεινοφρόνησιν, cum carcer ediscendus, et fames ac sitis exercendae, et tam inediae quam anxii victus tolerantia usurpanda sit, ut in carcerem talis introeat Christianus, qualis inde prodisset; non poenam illic passurus, sed disciplinam; nec saeculi tormenta, sed sua officia; eoque fidentior processurus ad certamen 0970B e custodia abusus, nihil habens carnis, sic ut nec habeant tormenta materiam; cum sola et arida sit cute loricatus, et contra ungulas corneus; praemisso jam sanguinis succo, tanquam animae impedimentis, properante jam et ipsa, quae jam saepe jejunans mortem de proximo norit: plane vestrum est in carceribus popinas exhibere martyribus incertis, ne consuetudinem quaerant, ne taedeat vitae, ne nova abstinentiae disciplina scandalizentur, quam nec ille Pristinus vester non christianus 0971A martyr attigerat; quem et facultate custodiae liberae aliquandiu fartum omnibus balneis quasi baptismate melioribus et omnibus luxuriae secessibus quasi Ecclesiae secretioribus et omnibus vitae istius illecebris quasi aeternae dignioribus, hoc puto obligatum ne mori vellet, postremo ipso tribunalis die luce summa condito mero tanquam antidoto praemedicatum, ita enervastis, ut paucis ungulis titillatus, hoc enim ebrietas sentiebat, quem Dominum confiteretur interroganti praesidi respondere non potuerit amplius. Atque ita de hoc jam extortus , cum singultus et ructus solos haberet, in ipsa negatione digessit . Ideo sobrietatis disciplinam qui praedicant pseudoprophetae, ideo haeretici qui observant. Quid ergo cessatis Paracletum, quem in Montano 0971B negatis, in Apicio credere? Praescribitis constituta esse solemnia huic fidei scripturis vel traditione majorum, nihilque observationis amplius adjiciendum, ob illicitum innovationis. State in isto gradu si potestis.