SO GOOD QUOTES

Now Paul crieth unto us, “Let not your hearts be made heavy through the eating of flesh and the drinking of wine”, that he may teach us that meat maketh heavy the heart, but they ate and did not become heavy, and they ate, moreover, that they might show that their lightness was more powerful than the heaviness of meat, and that by that thing which maketh dense the heart their mind became the brighter, and that by that which maketh heavy the body, and darkeneth the mind, the lightness of their understanding became more luminous. For being abstinent, that they should be clean, and pure, and holy, was not accounted by them so great a thing as that they should be purified in the matter of the things which make gross the heart, that is to say, that they should be purified in the matter of the things which are the contrary of purity, that they might overcome like mighty men that which was opposed to them, and that, like men of power and freemen, they might be uninjured by the things which cause injury.

—Philoxenus, Ascetic Discourses (1894) pp.403-471. Discourse 11 — On Abstinence