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| Examples of Heathens Urged as Commendatory of Widowhood and Celibacy.
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Chapter VI.—Examples
of Heathens Urged as Commendatory of Widowhood and Celibacy.
But if they who have (wives) are (thus)
bound to consign to oblivion what they have, how much more are they who
have not, prohibited from seeking a second time what they no
longer have; so that she whose husband has departed from the world
should thenceforward impose rest on her sex by abstinence from
marriage—abstinence which numbers of Gentile women devote to the
memory of beloved husbands! When anything seems difficult, let us
survey others who cope with still greater difficulties. How many
are there who from the moment of their baptism set the seal (of
virginity) upon their flesh? How many, again, who by equal mutual
consent cancel the debt of matrimony—voluntary eunuchs403
| 403 Comp. de Pa.,
xiii., and Matt. xix.
12. Comp. too, de
Ex. Cast., c. i. | for the sake of their desire after the
celestial kingdom! But if, while the marriage-tie is still
intact, abstinence is endured, how much more when it has been
undone! For I believe it to be harder for what is intact to be
quite forsaken, than for what has been lost not to be yearned
after. A hard and arduous thing enough, surely, is the continence
for God’s sake of a holy woman after her husband’s decease,
when Gentiles,404
in honour of their
own Satan, endure sacerdotal offices which involve both virginity and
widowhood!405
At Rome, for
instance, they who have to do with the type of that
“inextinguishable fire,”406
keeping watch
over the omens of their own (future) penalty, in company with the (old)
dragon407
himself, are appointed on the ground of
virginity. To the Achæan Juno, at the town
Ægium, a virgin is allotted; and the (priestesses) who rave
at Delphi know not marriage. Moreover, we know that widows
minister to the African Ceres; enticed away, indeed, from matrimony by
a most stem oblivion: for not only do they withdraw from their
still living husbands, but they even introduce other wives to them in
their own room—the husbands, of course, smiling on it—all
contact (with males), even as far as the kiss of their sons, being
forbidden them; and yet, with enduring practice, they persevere in such
a discipline of widowhood, which excludes the solace even of holy
affection.408
These precepts
has the devil given to his servants, and he is heard! He
challenges, forsooth, God’s servants, by the continence of his
own, as if on equal terms! Continent are even the priests of
hell!409
| 409 Gehennæ; comp.
de Pæn., c. xii. ad init. | For he has found a way to ruin men even
in good pursuits; and with him it makes no difference to slay some by
voluptuousness, some by continence.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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