diet so helpful in preserving thy virginity uncontaminated.  And where is now that grave deportment, and that modest mien, and that plain attire which so become a virgin, and that beautiful blush of bashfulness, and that comely paleness—­the delicate bloom of abstinence and vigils, that outshines every ruddier glow.  How often in prayer that thou mightest keep unspotted thy virginal purity hast thou poured forth thy tears!  How many letters hast thou indited to holy men, imploring their prayers, not that thou mightest obtain these human —­nuptials, shall I call them? rather this dishonorable defilement —­but that thou mightest not fall away from the Lord Jesus?  How often hast thou received the gifts of the spouse!  And why should I mention also the honors accorded for his sake by those who are his —­the companionship of the virgins, journeyings with them, welcomes from them, encomiums on virginity, blessings bestowed by virgins, letters addressed to thee as to a virgin!  But now, having been just breathed upon by the aerial spirit that worketh in the children of disobedience, thou hast denied all these, and hast bartered that precious and enviable possession for a brief pleasure, which is sweet to thy taste for a moment, but which afterward thou wilt find bitterer than gall.

Besides all this, who can avoid exclaiming with grief, “How is Zion, the faithful city, become an harlot!” Nay, does not the Lord himself say to some who now walk in the spirit of Jeremiah, “Hast thou seen what the virgin of Israel hath done unto me?” “I betrothed her unto me in faith and purity, in righteousness and in judgment, and in loving-kindness and in mercies,” even as I promised her by Hosea, the prophet.  But she has loved strangers; and even while I her husband lived, she has made herself an adulteress, and has not feared to become the wife of another husband.  And what would the bride’s guardian and conductor say, the divine and blessed Paul?  Both the ancient Apostle, and this modern one, under whose auspices and instruction thou didst leave thy father’s house, and join thyself to the Lord?  Would not each, filled with grief at the great calamity, say, “The thing which I greatly feared has come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is come unto me,” for “I espoused you unto one husband, that I might present you as a chaste virgin to Christ”; and I was always fearful, lest in some way as the serpent beguiled Eve by his subtilty, so thy mind should sometime be corrupted.  And on this account I always endeavored, like a skillful charmer, by innumerable incantations, to suppress the tumult of the passions, and by a thousand safeguards to secure the bride of the Lord, rehearsing again and again the manner of her who is unmarried, how that she only “careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit”; and I set forth the honor of virginity, calling thee the temple of God, that I might add wings to thy zeal, and help thee upward to Jesus; and I also had recourse