Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
Now human self-control — I mean that which is according to the philosophers of the Greeks — professes to fight against desire and not to serve it in deed, but ours professes not to desire at all, not that one who desires should hold out, but that one should be continent even of the desiring itself. And there is no other way to gain this self-control except by the grace of God. For this reason he said, "Ask, and it shall be given you." This grace also Moses received, though he wore a needy body, so that for forty days he neither hungered nor thirsted. But just as it is better to be healthy than to discourse about health while sick, so it is better to be light than to talk about light, and the self-control that is according to truth is better than that taught by the philosophers. For where light is, there darkness is not; but where desire sits enthroned, even alone, even if it rests from activity through the body, it still consorts in memory with what is not present.
In general, then, let our reasoning go forth concerning both marriage and food and the rest, doing nothing according to desire, but willing only those things that are necessary. For we are not children of desire, but of will. And the man who has married for the sake of childbearing must practice self-control, so as not even to desire his own wife, whom he ought to love, begetting children with a solemn and sober will. For we have not learned to take thought for the flesh unto desires, but to walk becomingly as in the day, by Christ and the lordly, luminous way of life — not in revelings and drunkenness, not in chamberings and wantonness, not in strife and jealousy.
But indeed it is fitting to observe self-control not only concerning one single form, that is, the things of Aphrodite, but also concerning all the other things for which our soul, in its extravagance, lusts, not being content with what is necessary but busying itself with luxury. Self-control is to despise money, to despise luxury, possessions, and spectacle, to master the tongue, to rule over wicked reasonings. Indeed, even certain angels, having become incontinent, were seized by desire and have fallen down here from heaven. But Valentinus, in his letter to Agathopous, says that Jesus, enduring all things, was continent; he was working out divinity; he ate and drank in a peculiar way, not giving back the food. So great was the power of his self-control that the nourishment was not even corrupted within him, since he himself had no part in corruption.
We, then, embrace self-control on account of our love toward the Lord and on account of the good itself, sanctifying the temple of the Spirit; for it is good, for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, to make oneself a eunuch from all desire, and to purify the conscience from dead works, so as to serve the living God.
But there are others who, through hatred of the flesh, desire ungratefully to be rid of the union of marriage and the partaking of fitting foods, being ignorant and godless, practicing self-control without reason, just as most of the other nations do. The Brahmans, for instance, neither eat anything that has life nor drink wine; but some of them take food each day as we do, while others of them do so every three days, as Alexander Polyhistor says in his Indian History; and they despise death and count life as nothing, for they believe there is a rebirth, and the gods they revere are Heracles and Pan. And those among the Indians called the Semnoi live naked their whole life; these practice truth and foretell things to come, and they revere a certain pyramid, under which they suppose the bones of some god to be laid up. Neither the gymnosophists nor those called the Semnoi have dealings with women; for they consider this contrary to nature and unlawful, for which reason they keep themselves pure, and the Semnai women likewise remain virgins. They are reputed to observe the heavenly bodies and, through the signs these give, to foretell certain things to come.
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