On Prayer 13

For the rest, what reason is there to go to prayer with hands washed but spirit filthy, when even the hands themselves need spiritual cleanness, so that they may be lifted up pure from falsehood, from murder, from cruelty, from poisonings, from idolatry, and from the other stains which, conceived by the spirit, are carried out by the work of the hands? These are true cleannesses, not those which most people superstitiously attend to, taking water before every prayer, even when they come from a bath of the whole body. When I inquired into this more carefully and asked the reason, I found that it was a commemoration of Pilate's washing his hands when he handed over the Lord. We worship the Lord; we do not hand him over. Indeed, we ought even to oppose the example of the one who handed him over, and not for that reason wash our hands. Unless we wash because of some defilement from human intercourse, for conscience' sake, our hands are clean enough, which we washed once for all, with the whole body, in Christ.