Teaching Christianity
marriage one could be guilty of wanton self-indulgence, as the prayer of Tobias shows, which he prayed when he was bedded with his wife. Thus he said, Blessed are you, Lord God of our fathers, and blessed is your holy name for ever and ever. May the heavens and all creation bless you. You it was who made Adam, and gave him Eve as a helper. And now, Lord, you know that it is not out of self-indulgent lust that I am taking this sister of mine, but in all sincerity, so that you may have mercy on us, Lord (Tb 8:5–7).
19, 28. But men who let themselves go to seed in their unbridled lust, and roam around from debauch to debauch, or even those who with their own wives not only exceed the limit allowed for the procreation of children, but even with a quite shameless licentiousness make use of a kind of slavish freedom to pile up the filth of a scarcely human selfindulgence;[42] such people do not believe it was possible for the men of old to make temperate use of many women, doing nothing in such use but performing the duty of begetting offspring as required in those times. And they assume that what they themselves, tangled in the snares of lust, cannot practice even with only one wife could not possibly be done with many.
29. But these people can also say that good and holy men should not even be honored and praised, since they themselves, when they are honored and praised, swell up with pride like turkey cocks, being all the more avidly eager for the vanity of empty fame, the more frequently and widely they are fanned with the breeze from flattering tongues. This makes them so lightheaded that the slightest breath of a rumor, whether it is considered favorable or adverse, can carry them into the whirlpools of any kind of infamy, or dash them on the rocks of any sort of crime.[43] So let them reflect how hard and difficult it is neither to be lured by the bait of praise nor pierced by the darts of abuse, and refrain from measuring others by the standard of themselves.