8.

But since the precepts of chastity have thus briefly been set forth to us, let us now give an instance of chastity. For it is more profitable when we come in the very presence of the thing; nor will there be any doubt about the virtue, when that which is prescribed is also designated by illustrations. The example of chastity begins with Joseph. A Hebrew youth, noble by his parentage, nobler by his innocence, on account of the envy excited by his revelations exposed for sale by his brethren to the Israelites, had attained to the household of a man of Egypt. By his obedience and his innocence, and by the entire faithfulness of his service, he had aroused in his favour the easy and kindly disposition of his master; and his appearance had commended itself to all men, alike by his gracious speech as by his youthfulness. But that same nobility of manner was received by his master's wife in another manner than was becoming; in a secret part of the house, and without witnesses,--a place high up, and fitted for deeds of wickedness, the unrestrained unchastity of the woman thought that it could overcome the youth's chastity, now by promises, now by threats. And when he was restrained from attempting flight by her holding his garments, shocked at the audacity of such a crime, tearing his very garments, and able to appeal to the sincerity of his naked body as a witness of his innocence, the rash woman did not shrink from adding calumny to the crime of her unchastity. Dishevelled, and raging that her desire should be despised, she complained both to others and to her husband that the Hebrew youth had attempted to use that force to her which she herself had striven to exercise. ¹ The husband's passion, unconscious of the truth, and terribly inflamed by his wife's accusation, is aroused; and the modest youth, because he did not defile his conscience with the crime, is thrust into the lowest dungeon of the prison. But chastity is not alone in the dungeon; for God is with Joseph, and the guilty are given into his charge, because he had been guiltless. Moreover, he dissolves the obscurities of dreams, because his spirit was watchful in temptations, and he is freed from chains by the master of the prison. He who had been an inferior in the house with peril, was made lord of the palace without risk; restored to his noble station, he received the reward of chastity and innocence by the judgment of God, from whom he had deserved it.