The Koine Bible

And what is marvelous if the desires of the soul are nullified toward participation in beauty?

Accordingly, the self-controlled Joseph is praised in this, because with understanding he mastered pleasure.

For being young and in his prime for intercourse, he nullified with reason the goad of the passions

And not only does reason appear to prevail over the frenzy of pleasure, but also over every desire

Therefore the law says, You shall not desire your neighbor’s wife, nor whatever belongs to your neighbor.

And yet, when the law has said us not to desire, I would much rather persuade you that reason is able to master the desires, just as also the passions that hinder righteousness.

For in what way does one, being by nature a glutton and a belly-slave or even a drunkard, get trained again, if not because it is clear that reason is master of the passions?

Accordingly, then, living as a citizen by the law, even if someone is greedy for money, he forces his own manner by lending to those in need without interest, and when the loans of the weeks have stood, he remits the debt.

And if anyone is stingy, he is held in check by the law through reason, neither gathering the harvests nor gleaning the vineyards, and also in the case of the others this is to be recognized, that reason is master of the passions.

For the law also masters the favor toward parents, not betraying virtue on account of them

and he prevails over the friendship toward a wife, exposing it because of its own lawlessness

and he rules over the affection for children through wickedness, punishing them

and he masters the companionship of friends, exposing them through wickedness

And do not suppose it to be strange that reason is able to prevail over enmities, since through the law it neither cuts down the cultivated plants of enemies, but preserves those of the enemies for those who have destroyed them, and it raises together again the fallen ones

And reason seems to master even the more violent passions: love of rule and vainglory and boastfulness and pride and envy

For the prudent mind thrusts away all these evil passions, as also anger, for it has mastery over this too.

But Moses, though being angry at Dathan and Abiron, did nothing against them in anger, but by reason he regulated anger

For the temperate mind, as I said, is able to prevail over the passions and to transfer some of them and even abolish others.

For why does our all-wise father Jacob blame Simeon and Levi, who slaughtered the Shechemites in a body, not by reason, saying, Cursed be their anger?

For if reason were not able to control anger, he would not have spoken thus.

For when God fashioned man, he planted his passions and his dispositions

But when over all he enthroned the holy ruling mind through the sense-organs

And to this one he gave a law, according to which, living as a citizen, he will reign a kingdom sober and also just and good and courageous.

How then could someone say, if reason is master of the passions, that it does not rule over forgetfulness and ignorance?