Letter 135: A festival — properly speaking — is one that is unstained by any shameful indulgence, but adorned instead with...

To Ausonius the Corrector [a provincial governor], on the same subject. If lust both pulls down and strips away the strength of the body and of the spirit itself, and makes the man it captures an easy target for mockery and laughter, as Samson teaches us when he was blinded, why do you drag captivity upon yourself by your own choice, and fail to keep your natural vigor unmaimed? Why do you make yourself, willingly, the work of the passions, and grieve God, who has nowhere in your life to lay his head, and war against us who pray that you may be saved, and wrong your own self by refusing the medicines of recovery?

Ὁμοῖον. Εἰ καὶ τὴν ἰσχὺν τοῦ σώματος, καὶ τὴν αὐτοῦ πνεύματος καθαιρεῖ καὶ ἀφαιρεῖται ἡ λαγνεία, καὶ εὐχερῆ ποιεῖ πρὸς ἐμπαιγμὸν καὶ γέλωτα τὸν ἁλόντα, καθὼς διδάσκει Σαμψὼν ἐκτυφλούμενος, τί ἐπισπᾶσαι αἰχμαλωσίαν αὐθαίρετον, καὶ οὐ φυλάττεις τὴν φυσικὴν ῥώμην ἀλώβητον, ἀλλ᾽ ἔργον παθῶν ἑκουσιῶς γινόμενος, καὶ τὸν Θεὸν λυπεῖς οὐκ ἔχοντα κλῖναι τὴν κεφαλὴν ἐν τῷ βίῳ σου, καὶ ἡμῖν πολεμεῖς εὐχομένοις σωθῆναί σε, καὶ σαυτὸν ἀδικεῖς, τὰ ῥώσεως παραιτούμενος φάρμακα;