28 Every intelligent person knows wisdom, and praises the one who finds her. 29 Those who are skilled in words become wise themselves, and pour forth apt proverbs. 30 Do not follow your base desires, but restrain your appetites. 31 If you allow your soul to take pleasure in base desire, it will make you the laughingstock of your enemies. 32 Do not revel in great luxury, or you may become impoverished by its expense.

Thus in the Philebus, Plato, who had been the disciple of the barbarian philosophy, mystically called those Atheists who destroy and pollute, as far as in them lies, the Deity dwelling in them — that is, the Logos— by association with their vices. Those, therefore, who are consecrated to God must never live mortally (θνητῶς). Nor, as Paul says, is it meet to make the members of Christ the members of an harlot; nor must the temple of God be made the temple of base affections. Remember the four and twenty thousand that were rejected for fornication. But the experiences of those who have committed fornication, as I have already said, are types which correct our lusts. Moreover, the Pædagogue warns us most distinctly: Go not after your lusts, and abstain from your appetites; for wine and women will remove the wise; and he that cleaves to harlots will become more daring. Corruption and the worm shall inherit him, and he shall be held up as public example to greater shame. And again — for he wearies not of doing good — He who averts his eyes from pleasure crowns his life.