And if your foot offends you, cut it off: it is better for you to enter lame into life, than having two feet to be cast into hell, into the fire that never shall be quenched:
Read Chapter 9
Basil the Great
AD 379
Do not think that I am threatening you with false goblins like some mother or nurse, as they are accustomed to do with small children. Whenever the children wail wildly and incessantly, they put the children to silence by means of bogus tales. But these things I am telling you are not a fiction. Rather, they are true reason publicly proclaimed with a straightforward voice. Homilies , Sayings for a time of Hunger and Thirst
