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| Of Sin and Danger Incurred Even with a “Tolerant” Husband. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter V.—Of Sin and
Danger Incurred Even with a “Tolerant” Husband.
“But some husband does endure our
(practices), and not annoy us.” Here, therefore,
there is a sin; in that Gentiles know our (practices); in that
we are subject to the privity of the unjust; in that it is thanks to
them that we do any (good) work. He who “endures” (a
thing) cannot be ignorant of it; or else, if he is kept in ignorance
because he does not endure (it), he is feared. But since
Scripture commands each of two things—namely, that we work for
the Lord without the privity of any second person,472
and without pressure upon ourselves, it matters not in which quarter
you sin; whether in regard to your husband’s privity, if he be
tolerant, or else in regard of your own affliction in avoiding his
intolerance. “Cast not,” saith He, “your
pearls to swine, lest they trample them to pieces, and turn round and
overturn you also.”473 “Your
pearls” are the distinctive marks474 of
even your daily conversation. The more care you take to conceal
them, the more liable to suspicion you will make them, and the more
exposed to the grasp of Gentile curiosity. Shall you escape
notice when you sign your bed, (or) your body; when you blow away some
impurity;475
475 Comp. de Idol.,
c. xi. sub fin. | when even by night
you rise to pray? Will you not be thought to be engaged in some
work of magic? Will not your husband know what it is which you
secretly taste before
(taking) any food? and if he knows it to be bread, does he not believe
it to be that (bread) which it is said to be? And
will every (husband), ignorant of the reason of these things, simply
endure them, without murmuring, without suspicion whether it be bread
or poison? Some, (it is true,) do endure (them); but it is
that they may trample on, that they may make sport of such women; whose
secrets they keep in reserve against the danger which they believe in,
in case they ever chance to be hurt: they do endure (wives),
whose dowries, by casting in their teeth their (Christian) name, they
make the wages of silence; while they threaten them, forsooth, with a
suit before some spy476
476
“Speculatorem;” also = "an" executioner. Comp.
Mark vi. 27. | as arbitrator! which
most women, not foreseeing, have been wont to discover either by the
extortion of their property, or else by the loss of their
faith.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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