Christian sexual self-control

Again, we do not expose children because one of those exposed might not be taken up but die, and we would become murderers. Either we do not marry in the first place except for the purpose of raising children, or, if we renounce marriage, we practice complete self-control. Indeed, to persuade you that promiscuous intercourse is not one of our mysteries, one of our people submitted a petition in Alexandria to the governor Felix, asking him to permit a physician to remove his testicles. The physicians there said that they were forbidden to do this without the governor’s permission. When Felix was entirely unwilling to sign the request, the young man remained as he was and was content with his own conscience and that of those who shared his judgment. We also thought it not out of place to mention here Antinous, who lived only recently, whom everyone was driven by fear to worship as a god even though they knew who he was and where he came from.