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| Excuses Commonly Urged in Defence of Second Marriage. Their Futility, Especially in the Case of Christians, Pointed Out. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
XII.—Excuses Commonly Urged in Defence of Second Marriage.
Their Futility, Especially in the Case of Christians, Pointed
Out.
I am aware of the excuses by which we colour our
insatiable carnal appetite.566
566 Comp. herewith, ad
Ux., l. i. c. iv. | Our pretexts
are: the necessities of props to lean on; a house to be managed;
a family to be governed; chests567 and keys to be
guarded; the wool-spinning to be dispensed; food to be attended to;
cares to be generally lessened. Of course the houses of none but
married men fare well! The families of celibates, the estates of
eunuchs, the fortunes of military men, or of such as travel without
wives, have gone to rack and ruin! For are not we, too,
soldiers? Soldiers, indeed, subject to all the stricter
discipline, that we are subject to so great a General?568 Are not we, too, travellers in this
world?569
569 Or
“age”—sæculo. Comp. Ps.
xxxix. 12 (in LXX. xxxviii. 13, as in Vulg.) and Heb. xi.
13. | Why moreover, Christian, are you so
conditioned, that you cannot (so travel) without a wife?
“In my present (widowed) state, too, a consort in domestic works
is necessary.” (Then) take some spiritual wife. Take
to yourself from among the widows one fair in faith, dowered with
poverty, sealed with age. You will (thus) make a good
marriage. A plurality of such wives is pleasing to
God. “But Christians concern themselves about
posterity”—to whom there is no to-morrow!570 Shall the servant of God yearn after
heirs, who has disinherited himself from the world? And is it to be a reason for
a man to repeat marriage, if from his first (marriage) he have no
children? And shall he thus have, as the first benefit (resulting
therefrom), this, that he should desire longer life, when the apostle
himself is in haste to be “with the Lord?”571 Assuredly, most free will he be from
encumbrance in persecutions, most constant in martyrdoms, most prompt
in distributions of his goods, most temperate in acquisitions; lastly,
undistracted by cares will he die, when he has left children behind
him—perhaps to perform the last rites over his grave! Is it
then, perchance, in forecast for the commonwealth that such
(marriages)are contracted? for fear the States fail, if no rising
generations be trained up? for fear the rights of law, for fear the
branches of commerce, sink quite into decay? for fear the temples be
quite forsaken? for fear there be none to raise the acclaim, “The
lion for the Christians?”—for these are the acclaims which
they desire to hear who go in quest of offspring! Let the
well-known burdensomeness of children—especially in our
case—suffice to counsel widowhood: (children) whom men are
compelled by laws to undertake (the charge of); because no wise man
would ever willingly have desired sons! What, then, will you do
if you succeed in filling your new wife with your own conscientious
scruples? Are you to dissolve the conception by aid of
drugs? I think to us it is no more lawful to hurt (a
child) in process of birth, than one (already) born. But perhaps
at that time of your wife’s pregnancy you will have the hardihood
to beg from God a remedy for so grave a solicitude, which, when it lay
in your own power, you refused? Some (naturally) barren woman, I
suppose, or (some woman) of an age already feeling the chill of years,
will be the object of your forecasting search. A course prudent
enough, and, above all, worthy of a believer! For there is no
woman whom we have believed to have borne (a child) when barren or old,
when God so willed! which he is all the more likely to do if any one,
by the presumption of this foresight of his own, provoke emulation on
the part of God. In fine, we know a case among our brethren, in
which one of them took a barren woman in second marriage for his
daughter’s sake, and became as well for the second time a father
as for the second time a husband.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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