"Why do you sow where the field is eager to destroy the fruit? Where there are medicines of sterility? Where there is murder before birth? You do not even let a harlot remain a harlot, but you make her a murderess as well. Do you see that from drunkenness comes fornication, from fornication adultery, from adultery murder? Indeed, it is something worse than murder and I do not know what to call it; for she does not kill what is formed but prevents its formation. What then? Do you contemn the gift of God, and fight with His laws? What is a curse, do you seek as though it were a blessing? Do you make the anteroom of birth the anteroom of slaughter? Do you teach the woman who is given to you for the procreation of offspring to perpetrate killing? That she may always be beautiful and lovable to her lovers, and that she may rake in more money, she does not refuse to do this, heaping fire on your head; and even if the crime is hers, you are the cause. Hence also arise idolatries. To look pretty many of these women use incantations, libations, philtres, potions, and innumerable other things. Yet after such turpitude, after murder, after idolatry, the matter still seems indifferent to many men–even to many men having wives. In this indifference of the married men there is greater evil filth; for then poisons are prepared, not against the womb of a prostitute, but against your injured wife. Against her are these innumerable tricks, invocations of demons, incantations of the dead, daily wars, ceaseless battles, and unremitting contentions."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Homily 24 on the Epistle to the Romans [PG 60:626-27]
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Chrysostom
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
John Chrysostom
41 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by John Chrysostom →
Related Quotes
"Do not despise it when it is naked. Do not honor it in church with silk vestments while outside it is naked and numb …"
"What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desi…"
"I beg that, chiefest of all, you will remember constantly that not to share our own riches with the poor is a robbery…"
"Nothing is more miserable than those people who never failed to attack their own salvation. When there was need to ob…"
"The Master is gracious and receives the last even as the first; He gives rest to him that comes at the eleventh hour,…"
"Let all partake of the feast of faith. Let all receive the riches of goodness. Let no one lament their poverty, for t…"
"For Christians above all men are forbidden to correct the stumblings of sinners by force...it is necessary to make a …"
"By descending into hades, He made hades captive. He embittered it when it tasted of His flesh. ... It took a body, an…"
"And should you hear any one in the public thoroughfare, or in the midst of the forum, blaspheming God; go up to him a…"
"[T]he Jewish people were driven by their drunkenness and plumpness to the ultimate evil; they kicked about, they fail…"