“Neither am I leading you to the lofty peak of total renunciation of possessions [ἀκτημοσύνη]; but for the present I require you to cut off superfluities, and to desire a sufficiency alone. Now, the boundary of sufficiency is the using those things which it is impossible to live without. No one debars you from these, nor forbids you your daily food. I say ‘food,’ not ‘luxury’ [τροφὴν οὐ τρυφὴν λέγω]--‘raiment,’ not ‘ornament.’ Rather, this frugality--to speak correctly--is, in the best sense, luxury. For consider who should we say more truly feasted--he whose diet is herbs, and who is in sound health and suffered no uneasiness, or he who has the table of a Sybarite and is full of a thousand disorders? Clearly, the former. Therefore let us seek nothing more than these, if we would at once live luxuriously and healthfully. And let him who can be satisfied with pulse, and can keep in good health, seek for nothing more. But let him who is weaker, and needs to be [more richly] dieted with other vegetables and fruits, not be debarred from them.... We do not advise this for the harm and injury of men, but to lop off what is superfluous--and that is superfluous which is more than we need. When we are able to live without a thing, healthfully and respectably, certainly the addition of that thing is a superfluity.”--_Hom._ xix. 2 _Cor._ Denouncing the grossness of the ordinary mode of living, he eloquently descants on the evil results, physical as well as mental:--