1 Corinthians 6:18. Flee fornication. Note the studiously curt and stringent language (as that in 1 Corinthians 5:13), and not for nothing is “flight” here urged. This was what Joseph did (Genesis 39:12), and what the great mediaeval schoolman Thomas Aquinas, when a youth, literally did in exactly similar circumstances.

Every sin that a man doeth is without the body. Surfeiting and drunkenness, for example, are produced by the introduction into the body of foreign elements in excess.

but he that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body against its proper nature and use, prostituting it to base and blasting uses. Viewed in this light, that sin is like nothing else. It is a leprosy, which, when systematically practised, renders the body loathsome, enervates and slowly destroys the whole animal nature, and, what is worse, stupefies all the intellectual and moral powers.

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Old Testament