we did not approve of the fine garments they
wore and the sweet perfumes that trailed after them, we liked these
things, as all men do, with our senses; and our minds being filled with
thoughts of the children that would continue the order of the Essenes,
we spoke but little against the fine linen that these women brought and
the perfumes they exhaled, whereby our ruin was consummated. Joazabdus,
our president, himself fell into the temptation of woman's beauty and
was led into sinful acquiescence of a display of the images she had
brought with her; for without a display of them on either side of the
bridal bed she would not permit his embraces. She was of our religion in
all else, having abjured her gods and goddesses at every other moment of
the day and night; but licence of her body she could not grant except
under the eyes of Astarte, and Joazabdus, being a weak man, allowed the
images to remain. As soon as the news of these images spread, we went in
deputation to our president to beg him to cast out the images from our
midst, but he answered us: but one image remains--that of Astarte: none
looks upon it but she, and if I cast out the image that she reverences
she will go hence and with the fruit of my body within her body, and a
saint may be lost to us. But we answered him that even as Jacob set up
parti-coloured rods before the conceiving ewes that they might bear
parti-coloured lambs, so to gaze in the marriage-bed upon the image of
Astarte would surely stamp upon the children that might come the image
of that demon. But he was not to be moved, whereupon we withdrew, saying
to one another: we shall not move him out of his wickedness; and that
was why we went to his brother Daddeus and asked him to accept the
headship of the community in his brother's place. And seeing that he was
unwilling to set himself against his brother, we said: our God comes
before all things, and here we have heathen goddesses in our midst; and
the end of it was that Cozby, that was the Chaldean woman's name, put
poison into Daddeus' food, thinking to establish her rule thereby, but
as soon as the death of Daddeus became known many left the cenoby
polluted in their eyes by heathenism and murder.

So it always falls out, Hazael cried, wine and women have lost the world
many saints. Wine deceives the minds of those that drink it, and it
exalts men above themselves, and leads them into acts that in any other
moment they would shrink from, leav