Sdtan beaten in the flesh. Five ways ofgluttony. 405 vision of peace ? Or who is understood by the chief of the Book cooks, but the belly, which is served with most diligent care by cooks ? The chief of the cooks then destroys the walls of Jerusalem, because the belly, when it is not restrained, destroys the virtues of the soul. Hence is it that Paul was withdrawing the strength of the chief of the cooks, who was contending against the walls of Jerusalem, when he was saying, / chastise my hody^ and bring it into subjection, lest i Cor. perchance having preacJied to others, I myself become a ' '* ca^t-away. Hence he also premised, saying, / so run, not\h,2Q. as uncertainly, sofight I, not as ifbeating the air. Because when we restrain the flesh, we beat with these blows of our abstinence not the air, but unclean spirits; and when we subject that which is within us, we inflict blows ' on adver- • pugnos saries set without. Hence is it that when the king of Babylon orders the furnace to be kindled, he commands a heap of bitumen, tow, pitch, and firebrands to be furnished. But yet he consumes not in this fire the abstinent youths ; Dan. 4, ^ i.) because, though the ancient enemy presents to our view innumerable desires of dainties, to increase the fire of lust, yet the grace of the Holy Spirit breathes into holy minds, in order that they may remain uninjured by the heats of carnal concupiscence : so that though the flame may burn so far as to tempt the heart, yet the temptation may not blaze forth as far as to consent. 60. It should also be known, that the vice of gluttony tempts us in five ways. For it sometimes anticipates the seasons of want : but sometimes does not anticipate them, but seeks for daintier food. Sometimes it looks for those things, which must be taken, to be prepared more carefully ; but sometimes it agrees with both the quality of, and the season for, its food, but exceeds, in the quantity of what is to be taken, the measure of moderate refreshment. But sometimes that which it longs for is even of a baser kind, and yet it sins more fatally through the heat of unbounded desire. For Jonathan deserved in truth the sentence of i Sam. death from the mouth of his father, because in taking honey ' he anticipated the time which had been fixed for eating. And the people which had been brought out of Egypt, died in the desert, because it despised the manna, and sought for