Jerome
Patristic
c. A.D. 347–420
“(Verse 15) And having confidence in your beauty: you have fornicated in your name, and you have exposed your fornication to everyone passing by, so that they might become like you. A great danger, not to trust in the mercy of God, but in one's own beauty. And the higher one is, the more they should fear lest they fall and fornicate in their own name. Indeed, the adversaries despise ordinary food and desire foreign nourishment. Thus it is said of the devil: His food is choice (Habakkuk I, 16). He does not want to deceive anyone. Saul, the king chosen by the Lord, hastens to supplant Judas the apostle. Therefore, let us not trust in our own beauty, nor consider God's generosity to be our own virtue; but rather let us hear: Do not boast about tomorrow, for you do not know what a day may bring (Prov. 27:1). And in another place: Brothers, if a man is overtaken in any transgression, you who are spiritual should restore him in a spirit of gentleness, keeping watch on yourself, lest you too be tempted (Gal. 6:1). Let us not expose or pour out our fornication to every passerby, so that we may not become not of God, in whom we believe, but of the one by whom we are polluted. He who welcomes all vices, and receives into his bosom the spirit of various sins as they pass by, and spreads his legs to every passerby, he pours out his fornication, and begins to endure the dominion of the one whose guest he has become.”