About the Author

Desiderius Erasmus (c. 1469 – 1536) was a Dutch humanist scholar of vast learning and expertise. As Europe was rocked by the Protestant Reformation, Erasmus became known as one of Church’s most subtle and conciliatory defenders. Erasmus’ writing output was vast, and he counted among his friends men like the English scholar and future saint, Saint Thomas More. In this passage from his Manual of the Christian Knight, Erasmus offers ways to think about purity and resist sexual temptation – and he doesn’t hold back!

Erasmus on Sexual Temptation

Up to now have we verily opened and declared (however it be done) common remedies against all kind of vices. Now we shall try to give also certain special and particular remedies, how and by what means you ought to withstand every vice and sin, and first of all how you mayst resist the lust of the body … first think how uncleanly, how filthy, how unworthy for any man whatsoever he be that pleasure is which assimilates and makes us, we who are God’s work, equal not to beasts only, but also unto filthy swine, to goats, to dogs, and of all brute beasts, unto the most brute, yes which farther forth casts down far under the condition and state of beasts, us who are appointed to the company of angels and fellowship of the deity.

Let come to thy mind also how momentary the same is, how impure, how ever having more aloes [a bitter tasting substance] than of honey. And on the contrary side how noble a thing the soul is, how worshipful a thing the body of a man is, as I have rehearsed in the rules above. What devil’s peevishness it is that for so little, such uncleanly tickling of momentary pleasures to defile at one time both soul and body with ungodly manners? To profane and pollute that temple which Christ consecrated to himself with his blood? … Think how honest, how pleasant, how lusty and flourishing a thing is pureness of body and of mind, especially since it makes us acquainted and familiar with angels, and apt to receive the Holy Ghost: for truly that noble spirit, the lover of pureness, so greatly moves back from no vice at all as from uncleanliness, he rests and remains nowhere so much as in pure virgins’ minds. Set before your eyes how ungoodly it is, how altogether a mad thing to love, to wax pale, to be made lean, to weep, to flatter, and shamefully to submit thyself unto a stinking harlot most filthy and rotten, to gape and sing all night at her chamber window, to be made to the lure and be obedient at a beck, nor dare do anything except she nod or wag her head, to suffer a foolish woman to reign over you, to chide you: to lay unkindness one against the other, to fall out, to be made at one again, to give yourself willing unto a quean, that she might mock, kocke, mangle and spoil you. Where is, I ask you, among all these things the name of a man? Where is your beard? Where is that noble mind created unto most beautiful and noble things?

… And if it were so that you had eyes much sharper of sight than has a beast called lynx, or much clearer than the eyes of the eagle, yet with these eyes in the most clearest light that could be, you could not behold more certainly the thing that is right in front of you, than all the private and secret parts of your mind are open to the sight of God and his angels. Consider this too when you are overcome by bodily lust, of two things the one must follow, either that voluptuousness, once tasted, so shall enchant and darken your mind, that you must go from filthiness to filthiness, until you clean blinded shall be brought in sensum reprobum, that is to say, into a lewd and reprobate judgment. And so, made obstinate and sturdy in evil, you cannot, no truly can no longer, yield up filthy pleasure when she has forsaken you, which thing we see to have happened to very many, that when the body is wasted, when beauty is withered and vanished, when the blood is cold, when strength fails and the eyes grow dim, yet still continually they itch without ceasing. … The other possibility is, if perhaps it happens that by special favour of God you should come again to yourself. Then must that short and fugitive pleasure be purged with very great sorrow of mind, with mighty and strong labour, with continual streams of tears: how much more wisdom therefore is it not to receive at all the poison of carnal pleasure, than either to be brought into so uncurable blindness, or else to pay back so little, and that also false pleasure, with so great grievance and dolorous pain.

Moreover you may take many things relating to your own circumstances that might call you back from voluptuous pleasure.

… If you be learned, so much the nobler and liker unto God is your mind, and so much the more unworthy of this shame and rebuke.

If you are a gentleman, if you are a prince, the more plain and open the abomination is: the grievouser occasion it gives unto other inferiors to follow the same.

A married man, remember what an honest thing is a bed undefiled. And give diligence (as much as infirmity shall suffer) that your wedlock may imitate the most holy marriage of Christ and his church, whose image it bears: that is to wit, that your marriage may be clear of uncleanliness, and plenteous in procreation: for in no kind of living can it be but very filthy to serve and be bound to uncleanly lusts.

If you are a young man, take good heed busily that you pollute not unadvisedly the flower of your youth, which shall never spring again: and that you cast not away upon a thing most filthy your best and very golden years, which flee away most swiftly, and never return again: beware also lest now through the ignorance and negligence of youth, you commit that thing which should trouble you hereafter all your whole life, the conscience of your misdeeds ever persecuting you with those his most bitter, most grievous and sharp stings, which when pleasure departs she leaves behind her in our minds.

If you are a woman, this kind nothing more is more becoming than chastity, than modesty, and fear of dishonesty.

If you are a man, so much the more are you prepared and worthy of greater things, and unmeet and unworthy of these so lewd things.

If you are old, wish you had some other man’s eyes to consider yourself, that you might see how unbecoming voluptuousness is to you. Voluptuousness in youth is certainly miserable and to be bridled, but in an old fool it is truly surprising and monstrous, and mocked even by other people who follow pleasure. Among all monsters none is more wonderful than filthy lust in age. Oh old man, oh too much forgetful of yourself: at the least see in a mirror the hoary hairs and white snow of your head, your forehead furrowed with wrinkles, and your carrion face most like unto a dead corpse: and now at the last end when you are standing at the edge of the pit care for other things more appropriate to your age: and at least let reason persuade you to do now what you should have done long ago, reminded or indeed compelled by your age. Pleasure herself now rejects you, saying, I am not attractive to you anymore, but neither are you attractive or appropriate for me. You have played enough, you have eaten enough, you have drunk enough, it is time for you to depart, why do you hold on so tightly and why are you so greedy for pleasures of this life, when life herself is leaving you?