17. Are you not afraid, I entreat you, being such as you are, that when the day of resurrection comes, your Maker may not recognise you again, and may turn you away when you come to His rewards and promises, and may exclude you, rebuking you with the vigour of a Censor and Judge, and say: “This is not my work, nor is this our image. You have polluted your skin with a false medicament, you have changed your hair with an adulterous colour, your face is violently taken possession of by a lie, your figure is corrupted, your countenance is another’s. You cannot see God, since your eyes are not those which God made, but those which the devil has spoiled. You have followed him, you have imitated the red and painted eyes of the serpent.  As you are adorned in the fashion of your enemy, with him also you shall burn by and by.” Are not these, I beg, matters to be reflected on by God’s servants? Are they not always to be dreaded day and night? Let married women see to it, in what respect they are flattering themselves concerning the solace of their husbands with the desire of pleasing them, and while they put them forward indeed as their excuse, they make them partners in the association of guilty consent. Virgins, assuredly, to whom this address is intended to appeal, who have adorned themselves with arts of this kind, I should think ought not to be counted among virgins, but, like infected sheep and diseased cattle, to be driven from the holy and pure flock of virginity, lest by living together they should pollute the rest with their contagion; lest they ruin others even as they have perished themselves.

XVII. Non metuis, oro, quae talis es, ne cum resurrectionis dies venerit, artifex tuus te non recognoscat, ad sua praemia et promissa venientem removeat et excludat, increpans vigore censoris et judicis dicat: Opus hoc meum non est, nec imago nostra est. Cutem falso medicamine polluisti, crinem adultero colore mutasti, expugnata est mendacio facies, 0456B figura corrupta est, vultus alienus est. Deum videre non poteris, quando oculi tui non sunt quos Deus fecit, sed quos diabolus infecit. Illum tu sectata es, rutilos atque depictos oculos serpentis imitata es, de inimico tuo compta, cum illo pariter et arsura. Haec, oro, cogitanda non sunt Dei servis? non die semper ac nocte metuenda? Viderint quid sibi nuptae per placendi studium de conjugum solatio blandiantur; quos dum in excusationem suam proferunt, ad societatem criminosae consensionis adsciscunt. Virgines certe, quibus hic sermo nunc consulit, quae se ejusmodi artibus compserint, inter virgines non putem debere numerari, sed tamquam contactas oves et morbidas pecudes a sancto et puro grege virginitatis 0456C arceri, ne contagio suo caeteras polluant dum simul 0457A degunt, ne perdant alias quaecumque perierunt.