What defilements did they suggest! what shame! And now I much
less than half heard them, and not openly showing themselves and
contradicting me, but muttering as it were behind my back, and privily
plucking me, as I was departing, but to look back on them. Yet they
did retard me, so that I hesitated to burst and shake myself free from
them, and to spring over whither I was called; a violent habit
saying to me, "Thinkest thou, thou canst live without them?"
But now it spake very faintly. For on that side whither I had set my
face, and whither I trembled to go, there appeared unto me the
chaste dignity of Continency, serene, yet not relaxedly, gay, honestly
alluring me to come and doubt not; and stretching forth to receive and
embrace me, her holy hands full of multitudes of good examples:
there were so many young men and maidens here, a multitude of youth
and every age, grave widows and aged virgins; and Continence herself
in all, not barren, but a fruitful mother of children of joys, by Thee
her Husband, O Lord. And she smiled on me with a persuasive mockery,
as would she say, "Canst not thou what these youths, what these
maidens can? or can they either in themselves, and not rather in the
Lord their God? The Lord their God gave me unto them.
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