Chapter I.—Connection of Gluttony and Lust.  Grounds of Psychical Objections Against the Montanists.

I should wonder at the Psychics, if they were enthralled to voluptuousness alone, which leads them to repeated marriages, if they were not likewise bursting with gluttony, which leads them to hate fasts.  Lust without voracity would certainly be considered a monstrous phenomenon; since these two are so united and concrete, that, had there been any possibility of disjoining them, the pudenda would not have been affixed to the belly itself rather than elsewhere.  Look at the body:  the region (of these members) is one and the same.  In short, the order of the vices is proportionate to the arrangement of the members.  First, the belly; and then immediately the materials of all other species of lasciviousness are laid subordinately to daintiness:  through love of eating, love of impurity finds passage.  I recognise, therefore, animal1    i.e., Psychic. faith by its care of the flesh (of which it wholly consists)—as prone to manifold feeding as to manifold marrying—so that it deservedly accuses the spiritual discipline, which according to its ability opposes it, in this species of continence as well; imposing, as it does, reins upon the appetite, through taking, sometimes no meals, or late meals, or dry meals, just as upon lust, through allowing but one marriage.

It is really irksome to engage with such:  one is really ashamed to wrangle about subjects the very defence of which is offensive to modesty.  For how am I to protect chastity and sobriety without taxing their adversaries?  What those adversaries are I will once for all mention:  they are the exterior and interior botuli of the Psychics.  It is these which raise controversy with the Paraclete; it is on this account that the New Prophecies are rejected:  not that Montanus and Priscilla and Maximilla preach another God, nor that they disjoin Jesus Christ (from God), nor that they overturn any particular rule of faith or hope, but that they plainly teach more frequent fasting than marrying.  Concerning the limit of marrying, we have already published a defence of monogamy.2    [Which is a note of time, not unimportant.]  Now our battle is the battle of the secondary (or rather the primary) continence, in regard of the chastisement of diet.  They charge us with keeping fasts of our own; with prolonging our Stations generally into the evening; with observing xerophagies likewise, keeping our food unmoistened by any flesh, and by any juiciness, and by any kind of specially succulent fruit; and with not eating or drinking anything with a winey flavour; also with abstinence from the bath, congruent with our dry diet.  They are therefore constantly reproaching us with novelty; concerning the unlawfulness of which they lay down a prescriptive rule, that either it must be adjudged heresy, if (the point in dispute) is a human presumption; or else pronounced pseudo-prophecy, if it is a spiritual declaration; provided that, either way, we who reclaim hear (sentence of) anathema.

CAPUT PRIMUM.

Mirarer Psychicos si sola luxuria tenderentur , qua saepius nubunt; et non etiam ingluvie lacerarentur , qua jejunia oderunt, monstrum scilicet haberetur libido sine gula, cum duo haec tam unita atque concreta sint, ut si disjungi omnino potuissent, ipsi prius ventri pudenda non adhaererent. Specta corpus, et una regio est. Denique pro dispositione membrorum, ordo vitiorum; prior venter, et statim caetera saginae substructa lascivia est. Per 0953C edacitatem salacitas transit. Agnosco igitur animalem fidem studio carnis qua tota constat, tam multivorantiae quam multinubentiae pronam; ut merito spiritalem disciplinam pro substantia aemulam, in 0954B hac quoque specie continentiae accuset, proinde gulae frenos induentem per nullas interdum vel seras vel aridas escas, quemadmodum et libidini per unicas nuptias. Piget jam cum talibus congredi, pudet et jam de eis altercari, quorum nec defensio verecunda est. Quomodo enim protegam castitatem et sobrietatem sine taxatione adversariorum? Quinam isti sint semel nominabo exteriores et interiores botuli Psychicorum. Hi Paracleto controversiam faciunt; propter hoc novae prophetiae recusantur: non quod alium Deum praedicent Montanus et Priscilla et Maximilla, nec quod Jesum Christum solvant (I Joan. IV, 3), nec quod aliquam fidei aut spei regulam evertant; sed quod plane doceant saepius jejunare, quam nubere. De modo quidem 0954C nubendi jam edidimus monogamiae defensionem. Nunc de castigatione victus, secunda, vel magis prima continentiae pugna est. Arguunt nos, quod jejunia propria custodiamus; quod stationes 0955A plerumque in vesperam producamus; quod etiam xerophagias observemus, siccantes cibum ab omni carne, et omni jurulentia, et uvidioribus quibusque pomis, ne quid vinositatis vel edamus vel potemus; lavacri quoque abstinentiam, congruentem arido victui. Novitatem igitur abjectant, de cujus inlicito praescribant, aut haeresim judicandam, si humana praesumptio est, aut pseudoprophetiam pronuntiandam, si spiritalis indictio est, dum quaqua ex parte anathema audiamus, qui aliter adnuntiamus (Gal. I, 8).