Titus 2:6

Titus 2:6 sums up in the same comprehensive term the peculiar duty of the Christian young man

the opposite being the defect of character conspicuous in his class. Also, the special sin of heathenism lay in the excessive indulgence of natural desires, on which heathen philosophy had striven in vain to apply a curb. ‘Self-restraint is needful not alone in fleshly actions or the lusts of the mind, but in all things, that we may neither desire honours which are not due to us, nor be inflamed with avarice nor subdued by any passion whatever' (Jerome). Wisdom requires a similar restraint or balance in the formation and the holding of intellectual opinions.