Can’t Escape the World Like That

“For a brief season in his life, Jerome (ca. AD 347-420), the translator of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate), decided to become a hermit, an ascetic. He went out into the desert, living among wild animals and scorpions. He became emaciated because of his extreme methods of fasting, trying to live by the standards of God’s law as he understood it. He tells us in a biographical narrative that even as he was trying to conform himself to the standards of God’s law, he found that his mind-even in the midst of a desert, while his body was wasting away-was filled with thoughts of the young girls who had surrounded him in Rome.’ The law could not help him. In fact, the law exacerbated his sin.” -Derek Thomas