CAPUT LIX. Quod nec ordinata verecundia sit bona, nisi sit et moderata
Two Kinds of Blushing
Distinguishes blushing for God’s sake from blushing for one’s own sake, identifying the former with Dinah’s going out.
But you may wonder, perhaps, since we condemned human modesty earlier, why we now teach that it belongs to Dinah, when through Dinah alone we should understand ordered modesty. But it's one thing for people to blush for God's sake, and another for those same people to blush for their own sake: "Let your light shine," says Scripture, "so that they may see your good works, and your Father who is in heaven may be glorified." So it's good to blush at disgrace, not so much for our own glory as for the glory of God.1 And this, perhaps, is Dinah going out: blushing at human disgrace for God's sake.
The Conscience Shamed Before God
Shows that ordered modesty dwells inward, in a conscience tender before God, and can thus be called good, ordered, and human.
For then, without a doubt, Dinah is found within, when our conscience is put to shame even about its hidden things before God. So for people to blush for God's sake is to have good modesty, and the kind we don't doubt belongs to Dinah. So modesty of this kind is ordered, and in a certain respect it can rightly be called human.2
The Measure of Modesty
Warns that even ordered modesty must be moderate, since Dinah’s ruin came from straying beyond her private chamber.
Still, truly, modesty of this kind is good if it's not excessive. Certainly, if Dinah had still been a little girl, or if she had stayed within the private recesses of her own room, she wouldn't have incurred the stain of corruption, and she wouldn't have become the cause of so many evils.
Read the original Latin
Sed miraris forte cum humanam verecundiam superius reprobaverimus, cur eam modo ad Dinam pertinere doceamus, cum per Dinam solam ordinatam verecundiam intelligere debeamus. Sed aliud est homines erubescere propter Deum, et aliud eosdem erubescere propter seipsos: Sic luceat lux vestra, dicit Scriptura, ut videant opera vestra bona, et glorificetur Pater vester qui in coelis est. Bonum est ergo erubescere infamiam, non tam ad nostram quam ad gloriam divinam. Et hoc est forte Dinam exire, hominum infamiam propter Deum erubescere. Nam tunc procul dubio Dina intus invenitur, quando de occultis etiam suis coram Deo conscientia nostra confunditur. Homines itaque propter Deum erubescere, est bonam verecundiam habere, et qualem non dubitamus ad Dinam pertinere. Verecundia itaque talis et ordinata est, et juxta aliquid recte humana dici potest. Revera tamen hujusmodi bona est, si non sit nimia.
Certe si Dina adhuc parvula esset, vel intra thalami sui secreta seipsam cohiberet, corruptionis maculam non incurrisset, et tantorum malorum causa non exstitisset.
Notes
Benjamin Minor (The Twelve Patriarchs / Preparation of the Mind for Contemplation) companion
A daily portion of stillness
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