(1) You must know that perfect modesty, that is, Christian modesty, requires not only that you never desire to be an object of desire on the part of others, but that you even hate to be one. First of all, because the effort to please by external beauty does not come from a sound conscience, since beauty we know to be naturally the exciter of lust. Why, then, excite that evil against yourself? Why invite something to which you profess to be a stranger? Secondly, because we ought not to open
Page 131