The Instructor 2.10.100

Let us by no means, then, cover ourselves with darkness, for the light dwells in us: “And the darkness,” it says, “does not overtake it,” and night is lit up by self-controlled reasoning. Scripture has named the thoughts of good men unsleeping lamps. Indeed, trying to escape notice in what one does is admitting that one sins; and everyone who sins at once does wrong, not so much to his neighbor, if he commits adultery, as to himself, because he has committed adultery. He certainly shows himself worse and more dishonorable. For the sinner, insofar as he sins, is worse and more dishonorable than himself; and licentiousness is present in one who is overcome by shameful pleasure. So the fornicator is altogether dead to God, abandoned by the Word as by the Spirit, a corpse. For the holy loathes being defiled, as is natural; and it is always right for the pure to touch the pure. Let us never, when we take off our tunic, take off modesty too; for it is never right for the righteous to take off self-control. For behold, this corruptible will put on incorruption, when the insatiability of desire, which flows into licentiousness, trained by self-control and no longer in love with corruption, yields the human being to eternal self-control. “For in this age they marry and are given in marriage”; but having done away with the works of the flesh, putting on incorruption in the pure flesh itself, we pursue the measure of the angels.