The Instructor 3.12.85

These precepts of righteousness, even when spoken by those who pursue worldly wisdom, should not be rejected. Knowing, then, “each one's work, conduct yourselves in fear during the time of your sojourning, knowing that you were redeemed from your futile way of life handed down from your fathers not with perishable things, silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot.” “For the time that is past is enough,” Peter says, “to have done the will of the Gentiles, walking in licentiousness, lusts, drunkenness, revelries, drinking parties, and lawless idolatries.” Let us have as our boundary the cross of the Lord, by which we are fenced about and walled off from our former sins. Having been born again, then, let us be nailed to the truth, and return to sobriety and be sanctified, “because the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and his ears open to their prayer, but the face of the Lord is against those who do evil. And who will harm us, if we become zealous for what is good?” The best way of life is good order, which is complete seemliness and settled, ordered power, rendering well in action the things that follow one another in sequence, unsurpassed in virtue.