Johannes Creel (alt. Crellius) was the rector of the Racovian Academy. He was a leading proponent of Socinian theology in the 17th-cenutry. I found it interesting that a leading theologian of the Radical Reformation would argue that celibacy (“perpetual virginity”) represents the highest expression of temperance:
Its perfection is perpetual
virginity
The perfection of this virtue is
perpetual virginity, that is, a perpetual abstinence from this kind of
pleasures, even from those which are otherwise not dishonourable, provided only
that purity of soul be present as well. And although God lays it upon no man
whatever as a command, yet it becomes those to pursue it to whom the strength
for performing it has been granted. Whence Christ says: “He who is able to
receive it, let him receive it.” And this our Lord Christ kept, and so did
Paul, the chief of the Apostles, who also prefers it to wedlock and affirms
this state of life to be the holier and the purer, and the fitter for a
perpetual zeal in serving God. To the rest he says: “It is better to marry than
to burn.” True celibacy, therefore, or perpetual virginity, is of itself and
its own nature more excellent than wedlock; but for this man or that, marriage
is the more useful. And who has the strength for that perpetual chastity may be
discerned in the flower of youthful and manly age.
As regards longing, it must be
observed that you never desire dishonourable pleasures, and that you desire the
honourable ones moderately, and in their own time and age. In two ways men are
wont to offend in the longing for dishonourable pleasures: either when a man
resolves that he will obtain them and only awaits the occasion; or when he does
not indeed so resolve, but tickles his soul with the thought of them. Both of
these are to be avoided in the desires of all dishonourable things, and
especially by the young, whose desires at that vigorous age are wont to be the
keener. For nothing defiles or pollutes the soul more than this thought and
this desire, even as nothing defiles the body itself more than this very
pleasure. Whence he alone who gives himself over to lust is said κατ’ εξοχην to sin against his own body and to bring dishonour upon it.
If, therefore, the thought of a base thing creeps in, it must at once be shaken
out of the soul, and the thought turned elsewhere. And if you will this
steadfastly, and give yourself leisure for prayer and for the meditation of
divine things, and holy the body in check by moderation of diet and shun sleep
and idleness, and busy yourself with honourable studies and labours, you will
attain it without difficulty.
As regards memory, pains must be
taken that even the memory of lawful pleasures be, so far as may be, blotted
out, and much more that of base ones. For the soul ought to be pure and
unspotted; and if in any matter at all a man should have to wish for himself,
with Themistocles, the art of forgetting, surely it is here that it should be
wished for. No pain at the absence of dishonourable pleasures ought to arise in
a chaste soul, and only a moderate pain at the absence of honourable ones.
Incidentally therein pertain to
this virtue: 1. that the eyes, the ears and the hands be continent, that is,
that nothing be looked upon, read, heard or handled which stirs up in us the
desire of these pleasures. 2. That our tongue also, and the gesture and bearing
of the whole body be modest, lest we stir up in others the thought of base
pleasures and the desire of them. For what is said of piety, that it is often
wounded even by the countenance, may be said of chastity as well. Whence Christ
forbids even the look upon a woman to lust after her; and hither belong also
those sayings about plucking out the eye and cutting off the hand, if they be a
stumbling-block to anyone, that is, if they afford occasion for sin—although
what is said of the hand pertains to touch. Care must therefore be taken, in
what we look upon, in our conversations with others and in the hearing of the
discourse of others—to which I added the reading of books as well—and lastly in
touch and in the gesture of the whole body, that nothing be done, said, seen or
heard which might stir up, nourish and increase in ourselves or in others the
desire of pleasures of this sort, or might rub up the memory of them, or which
might be a sign that the love of these pleasures holds up fast. Meetings,
moreover, and conversations, and the sight of those persons in whom there are
any allurements to such pleasures, such as beauty of form, are to be avoided,
lest an unclean thought creep in even upon one who is busied with something
else. (Johannes Crell, Aristotelian Ethics: Corrected by the Standards of
Holy Scripture [trans. Marcin Poholski; 2006], 109-10)
