We read, too, of
that eunuch of great authority under Queen Candace who had charge
of all her treasure, him to whose conversion and baptism the
apostle Philip was directed by an angel (Acts viii, 27). Such men,
in truth, are enabled to have far more importance and intimacy
among modest and upright women by the fact that they are free from
any suspicion of lust.
The sixth book of the Ecclesiastical History tells us that the
greatest of all Christian philosophers, Origen, inflicted a like
injury on himself with his own hand, in order that all suspicion of
this nature might be completely done away with in his instruction
of women in sacred doctrine. In this respect, I thought, God's
mercy had been kinder to me than to him, for it was judged that he
had acted most rashly and had exposed himself to no slight censure,
whereas the thing had been done to me through the crime of another,
thus preparing me for a task similar to his own. Moreover, it had
been accomplished with much less pain, being so quick and sudden,
for I was heavy with sleep when they laid hands on me, and felt
scarcely any pain at all.
But alas, I thought, the less I then suffered from the wound, the
greater is my punishment now through slander, and I am tormented
far more by the loss of my reputation than I was by that of part of
my body.
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