To Florus · §4.37

To Florus 4.37

Then respectable people are also wrong to take care to screen natural functions with modesty. So you yourself should evacuate the remains of your food—which you certainly admit do not belong to lust—under the people’s eyes. Indeed, to lend your doctrine authority by your example, perform in church everything you say happens at the will’s command. Be content to hide only the act of sexual union, from which you long ago abstained by resolution and perhaps now also through old age. Say that it is a great sacrilege for anything whose creator is God to avoid public view. Eat, then, in the marketplace or in the meeting places where your arguments resound. And when clothes become a burden under a scorching sun, cover only that part of your body that the devil has moved, and walk about otherwise naked. For you pronounce it ungrateful and profane to cover anything assigned to God’s works. Since you do none of these things—unless further progress has already brought you to do them—your very conduct confirms one of two conclusions: either everything you do not perform in public view belongs to the devil, or your doctrine has fallen, on the testimony, if not of your heart, at least of your belly.

Latin source witness