Caput XXVI. Castitas in juvenili aetate sine magna cordis et corporis attritione non stat integra.

The Cost of Chastity

The chapter warns against self-deception, teaches that chastity demands genuine contrition and bodily discipline, and challenges the reader to recognize that God's gift of continence still requires willing labor and humility.

Don't stroke yourself with flattery, don't coax yourself, don't deceive yourself. Chastity is never attained or preserved by young people without great contrition of heart and affliction of the flesh — chastity that is so often endangered in the sick and the old. Granted, continence is a gift of God, and no one can be continent unless God grants it — nor is this gift owed to any merit of ours, but must be ascribed to His free and unmerited grace — yet He judges those unworthy of so great a gift who shrink from undergoing any labor for it, wanting to be chaste amid pleasures, continent at banquets, to mix and mingle among boys and girls without being tempted, to stretch themselves with feasting and drunkenness amid foul excess and not be defiled, to restrain their gaze amid flames and not be burned. Whether this is difficult or impossible, you can decide for yourself.