Letter 112

Isidore of PelusiumUnknown|isidore pelusium
humor
From: Isidore of Pelusium, monk at Pelusium
To: A bishop
Date: ~410 AD
Context: Isidore confronts a bishop whose life has been consumed by luxury and licentiousness, telling him that the return to self-control is simple in principle — remove the fuel.

You are doing something like a man with an incurable disease who, having been given freedom to do whatever he desires, has dismissed the physicians and feasts himself on everything that makes his condition worse. This is why the return to self-control seems so difficult to you: you have made no move to stop what is generating the problem.

If you would stop the luxury that drives you toward erotic frenzy — for that is the root and mother of licentiousness — the flame of licentiousness itself would be extinguished. When the fuel is taken away, the fire that was growing and reaching its peak from that fuel will obviously die down. This is not a complicated principle.

But if you yourself keep supplying the fuel to the fire, how will it cease? The fire does not stop itself. The disease does not heal itself when you keep feeding it what makes it worse. The physician's prescription is simple: stop giving the fire what it runs on.

I do not say this to condemn but because there is still time to act on it. The return to self-control is arduous but not impossible. Begin by removing the luxury. Let the fuel run out. The flame will follow.

Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.