XLVII. For filled and heaped and choked up are the bosoms of his imaginations from the drop of evil love, that has dropped there and become a great sea ; and lo, arguments plunge and emerge, like sailors whose ships have been wrecked, and lo, the thought there is unclean, like a ship that has no skipper, and when Law like a sailor wishes to bring it into a good harbour [P. 187.] it struggles with its sailor and loves its own loss.
XLVIII. O Youthfulness, mistress of (various) courses (of life), do not complete [thy] courses in the maze of desires ; when that which works in thee and takes away thy strength has |lxxxix dismissed and left thee (it will be) that thy Old Age may come to mockery, because a hateful course thou hast kept for shame.
XLIX. Lighten, O Youthfulness, thy course in the contest, that a crown may adorn thy Old Age ; for when Old Age has faded and its intelligence diminished, they remember the humility of its Youthfulness, which concentrated its intelligence ; men abhor it seeing the blemishes of its Body, but they cherish it seeing its secret plants of the Spirit.
L. Paint, O Youthfulness, thy victories on thy members, by which thou wilt become precious when thou growest old : paint on thy hands all charitable acts, with the visiting of the sick seal thy footsteps ; paint on thy heart the image of thy Lord.
LI. And if the nailed-up Tablets that the carpenter has constructed and the painter painted have become precious, yea, are [P. 188.] revered by reason of the Figure of Royalty, how much more therefore will thy limbs become precious, on which are painted the images of thy King ?
LII. Youthfulness is like a branch of fine fruits that is fair in the summer, and when its fruits and its leaves have been stripped off it becomes hateful, and every one turns his face from it, and what was desired of all becomes the despised of all. O inexperience! do not shew thy beauty to those outside, which when it has become hateful and aged those that see despise it.
LIII. O Eye ! let not the beauty of Youthfulness take thee captive, in which are hidden the blemishes of Old Age. For the limbs of youthful vigour, a fair spectacle, carry them, but Old Age convicts them, that a borrowed beauty was dwelling upon them, one that while yet it stays and alights goes off and flies away.
LIV. But if there should chance to be a royal captivity, and thy humility should be exposed in the field, the unclean compulsion of the captor argues for thee that thou art holy, as Sarah also [P. 189.] was holy in the unclean bosom of foul Pharaoh, she whose heart with her free-will did not commit adultery; her will was a priest to her bodily frame, and with its hyssop it purged the body that was defiled by force. For as a priest can cleanse the |xc temple in which he serves, so a pure Will can cleanse the Body, the Temple in the midst of which it acts as a priest.
LV. For it is a marvel in Man, that though he is one, he is to himself a Temple, he is to himself a Priest, he is to himself a Pontiff, he is to himself a Sacrifice ; he is the Offering, and he is the Offerer of the Offering : for he is like that Lamb of God, who was to Himself everything.
END OF DISCOURSE ON VIRGINITY.
Note from Vol. 1 Introduction, p. (10):
[ Short lacunae are indicated in the translation by dots, and longer gaps by asterisks, but in neither case is the number of the dots or asterisks intended to bear any exact relation to the number of the missing words. In respect to this an approximately correct inference may be drawn by consulting the Syriac text.
Double inverted commas mark quotations where the original has [Syriac]
Single inverted commas are used in numerous cases where the words seem to be quotations or to belong to a special terminology.
Words in italics inside square brackets are to be regarded as conjectural translations or paraphrases.
In a few passages, where the text has suffered great mutilation, italics indicate an attempt to summarise the argument from suggestions in the fragments. ]
[P.101] indicates page 101 of the accompanying Syriac. [l.2] means line 2 of the current page of the accompanying Syriac. [RP]
FOOTNOTES
I have moved the footnotes to the end. Those consisting of "Read [syriac] for [syriac]" or similar have been omitted, as it has not been possible to transcribe the fragments of Syriac. The pages are numbered with Roman numerals. Arabic numbers and line numbers relate to the Syriac text printed at the back of the paper volume. Greek text is rendered using the Scholars Press SPIonic font, free from here .
1. The whole of this Discourse was copied out by the monk Aaron (B.M. Add. 14623, foll. 23a-25a) from the old MS. before the writing was effaced. Where the transcript can be checked by the still legible portions of the original it is found to bo quite faithful, the few variations being almost all due to the adoption of a more modern style of spelling.
The text, both in the Palimpsest and in Aaron's transcript, is divided up into paragraphs or stanzas, which I have numbered, as in the case of the previous piece, but the Discourse on Virginity is not in regular metre. On this question, and the relation of the piece to the Hymns de Virginitate, printed at the end of Lamy's Ephraim, vol. ii, see the Introduction.
2. See Col. iii 9.
3. +therefore Aa.
4. See p. 35, 1. 34, and Overbeck, p. 123, 1. 12.
5. ? = to transmit.