A For, changing nature for the sake of no useful end, or for the sake of lasciviousness, they corrupt the form created by God and worthy of a man, often willingly or compelled to endure such things by others. They are despoilers of nature, enemies of the race, a stain upon human society, and transgressors against life. These, fornicating after the manner of Maenads, exult immoderately in the foulest passions, bearing a miserable life intertwined with base and lost morals, carrying about a spurious form of an ambiguous and hateful person. Let such men by all means depart far from sacred enclosures, and be driven away from holy assemblies as an abominable guilt and an object of hatred to God. For since, with a most foul and wretched intent, they have altered and transformed a beautiful and divine work into a depraved and infamous profession, and have compelled spiritual eunuchism to serve a forbidden use, they deserve not only to suffer the punishment of the laws, but are also to be utterly driven away into the "outer darkness" by the evangelical and apostolic decree. For concerning such people, Moses said: "He whose private parts have been crushed or cut off shall not enter into the assembly of the Lord." B
Yet it is possible to see the houses of men of rank filled with these monstrously formed persons, who wear golden collars on their necks, and while having the nature of a male, possess the appearance of a female; they walk with a languid gait and speak with a delicate tone. For, just like harlots, they toss their heads unseemly here and there, and they laugh uncontrollably and shamelessly, manifesting a manifest agitation of lust. Whence, they are corrupted by men, lying softly and being softened like women; but with women, sleeping as guardians and, as it were, images of chastity, they practice obscenity most brazenly and shamelessly. And these men, thus corrupted by impious and profane men, are polluted and defiled by a wickedness and abomination contrary to nature; but they themselves, in turn, like rabid dogs, stain and violate wretched women weighed down by sins, as has been said. And what is more serious and more lamentable, from this they become causes and procurers and participants in eternal punishment, both those who corrupt and those who are corrupted. C
But, alas for such folly, for such deception and madness! For people, and especially those of high standing, trust in these as though they were respectable men welcomed into their homes; but they, having become domestics and deemed worthy of confidence, little by little enticing those who were truly and honestly striving for virtue, wretchedly cast them into the infamous abyss of Sodom, and deliver them to the fire. Wherefore, quite fittingly, the law, the evangelical doctrine, the best rule of life, and religious discipline detest such men as hateful to God and impure. D [alt-version omitted]
and unclean. For they, having chosen and desired such a nefarious mode of life, so far as in them lies, destroy cities, corrupting the seminal principle of nature in an active and passive way, and disastrously ruin the burgeoning strength and stature of a man, his masculine and noble vitality; and, in a word, having plainly outraged the vigorous and blooming prime of youth, they make those who have been entrapped by them wretched and ridiculous A beings, whom one should flee with all haste and justly abhor, as murderers of souls and corrupters of bodies, and as those who are truly profane and who abuse nature. For in truth there is nothing more loathsome or unclean than those who thus play the harlot and those who act the harlot with them. For they are wont, as we have truly and accurately learned, not only for spadones, who possess the private parts in some manner and way, to be immoderately lascivious and insatiably lustful; but even the utterly emasculated and castrated, as well as those who from birth lack these members (O, the heights of absurdity and madness!), use their hands and fingers to violate wretched B women, and thus furiously and impiously perform this sacrilege. And the Wise Man clearly signified this when he said: "Blessed is the eunuch who has not wrought iniquity with his hand, and the virgin who has not known the marriage bed with sin." Justly, therefore, were they called neither women nor men, but androgynes, condemned to the sword, and crazed with a passion for women. Let those, then, listen who rashly suppose that such men are pure and continent; and let them not put faith in a lie and in feigned purity and temperance. For what shall be cleansed by the unclean, and from falsehood what truth is to be expected?
XX. Of the same Saint Cyril, from the first homily, the argument of which is that one ought not to call Him a God-bearing man, but God become man.
Great indeed was the blessed Moses; for he heard God saying: "I know you above all, and you have found grace before Me." C Yet he was as a faithful servant in the house. The prophet Samuel was to be admired, but he was still one of the number of those who invoked the God of all. The blessed prophets were holy, yet they acknowledge the measure of their servitude, and they performed an office becoming to servants, communicating to men living at that time, and indeed even to us ourselves, the word handed down to them from above by God. For they are always crying out: "Thus says the Lord." And Christ Himself also said somewhere concerning the blessed Baptist: "But he, D although according to the truthful oracle of the Savior...