Origen of Alexandria : After these things there is now related that most notorious tale, in which it is written that his daughters by craft stole intercourse with their father. In which matter I do not know whether anyone can so excuse Lot as to make him free from sin. Nor again do I think he should be so accused that he must be made guilty of so grave an incest. For I do not find that he lay in wait or violently seized the chastity of his daughters, but rather that he suffered a snare and was circumvented by craft. Yet neither again would he have been ensnared by the girls, had he not been able to be made drunk. Whence he seems to me to be found partly blameworthy, partly excusable. For he can be excused, in that he is free from the crime of concupiscence and pleasure, and because he is neither shown to have wished it himself nor to have consented to those who wished it; but he is subject to blame, in that he could be deceived, in that he indulged too much in wine, and did this not once but a second time. For Scripture itself too seems to me in some way to make satisfaction on his behalf, when it says: "For he did not know when he slept with them and when he arose." This is not said of the daughters, who by design and craft deceive their father. He, however, was so lulled to sleep by the wine that he did not know that he had slept with the elder daughter nor with the younger. Hear what drunkenness does; hear how great a crime intemperance procures. Hear and beware, you for whom this evil is not a matter of accusation but of habit. Drunkenness deceived him whom Sodom did not deceive. He is burned by the flames of women, whom the sulphurous flame did not burn. Lot, therefore, was deceived by craft, not by will. Therefore he is a kind of middle sort between sinners and the just; seeing that he descended indeed from the kindred of Abraham, yet dwelt in Sodom. For even this, that he escapes from Sodom, as Scripture indicates, pertains more to the honor of Abraham than to the merit of Lot. For thus it says: "And it came to pass," it says, "when God was destroying the cities of Sodom, God remembered Abraham and cast Lot out of that land." — HOMILIES ON Genesis 5.3