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| The Case of a Heathen Whose Wife is Converted After Marriage with Him Very Different, and Much More Hopeful. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter VII.—The Case of a Heathen Whose Wife is Converted
After Marriage with Him Very Different, and Much More
Hopeful.
If these things may happen to those women also
who, having attained the faith while in (the state of) Gentile
matrimony, continue in that state, still they are excused, as having
been “apprehended by God”483 in these very
circumstances; and they are bidden to persevere in their married
state, and are sanctified, and have hope of “making a
gain”484 held out to
them. “If, then, a marriage of this kind (contracted
before conversion) stands ratified before God, why should not
(one contracted after conversion) too go prosperously forward,
so as not to be thus harassed by pressures, and straits, and
hindrances, and defilements, having already (as it has) the partial
sanction of divine grace? “Because, on the one hand, the
wife485
485 Tertullian here and in
other places appears, as the best editors maintain, to use the
masculine gender for the feminine. | in the former case, called from among
the Gentiles to the exercise of some eminent heavenly virtue, is, by
the visible proofs of some marked (divine) regard, a terror to her
Gentile husband, so as to make him less ready to annoy her, less active
in laying snares for her, less diligent in playing the spy over
her. He has felt “mighty works;”486
he has seen experimental evidences; he knows her changed for the
better: thus even he himself is, by his fear,487
a candidate for God.488
488 Comp. de
Or., c. iii. (med.), “angelorum
candidati;” and de Bapt., c. x. sub fin.,
“candidatus remissionis.” | Thus men of
this kind, with regard to whom the grace of God has established a
familiar intimacy, are more easily “gained.” But, on
the other hand, to descend into forbidden ground unsolicited and
spontaneously, is (quite) another thing. Things which are not
pleasing to the Lord, of course offend the Lord, are of course
introduced by the Evil One. A sign hereof is this fact, that it
is wooers only who find the Christian name pleasing; and,
accordingly, some heathen men are found not to shrink in horror from
Christian women, just in order to exterminate them, to wrest them away,
to exclude them from the faith. So long as marriage of this kind
is procured by the Evil One, but condemned by God, you have a reason
why you need not doubt that it can in no case be carried to a
prosperous end.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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