Prometheus aside; real stains vs fire/water; gnat and camel

the others; yet the myths beside you sing that he also has been wrapped in unbreakable bonds; and indeed they say hook-clawed vultures also flew upon him, as indeed also upon Tityos, terrible and wild punishers. Give then, give the cleansing through fire, not to those alone, but if also some of you should rage upon others’ daughters, or wives, doing what is not lawful, let these also having been freed from the charge by fire escape together with the stumblings the indictments; yet upon others at once courts and writings, and the evil-hating of the laws is shaken, yet yourselves practicing the all-shameful and foul-smelling life without discernment, you think to free from every pollution, having been deceived by cold and childish playthings, and taking as helpers unto this those most foul of the others; who also together with the figure, having let go the man-fitting word, are brought down toward women’s habits and manners both in bodies and judgments. Then in what manner will such a one purify? for being disposed thus, you will do some such thing, as if someone also seemed to perfume himself, yet having been smeared with some most unordered mire, then should think to set right and very well what had come unto his mind.

Palladius: You speak well; and I would agree with you speaking true things.

Cyril: And I pass by the folly in this at least, and will be silent for now about the servants of the cleansing, yet I go again unto the matter itself; and indeed I will also say that one would catch the worshipers of the demons living most mindlessly and most unlearnedly, neither understanding the manner of the wiping-out, nor indeed having exacted what ever pollution and profanation is according to truth; for adulteries and the still wilder passions than these, male-intercourses and murders, slanders and envies, false-prophecies and deceits, trickery and false-oath, would be stains and pollutions defiling soul and body, and having a hard-to-wash-out casting-out. Yet neither fire, nor springs of waters would wipe these things. And having left, I think somewhere, even only to know that they spot a soul, and make the mind full of foul smell, they stand off from dead bodies, and abominate the corrupted, dishonoring nature’s laws. And indeed also of foods which they should choose according to themselves they condemn understandingly, and if it should happen perhaps, even unwillingly to touch, at once leaping up they go upon the cleansing through fire or water, as if if they should only hold off from these, they will be holy and sincere. For they have been defeated thus of the glory, and have stood out of wits, upon which things one would also say very reasonably: ‘Woe to you, reinless and unlearned ones, straining out the gnat, yet gulping down the camel.’ For counting worthy of no word what knows how truly to defile, they have shuddered superfluously at the things upon which someone undergoes no harm.