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| Chapter I
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VII.
On Modesty.701
| 701 [Written not
earlier than a.d. 208; probably very much
later. See Bp. Kaye’s very important remarks on this
treatise, p. 224.] |
[Translated by the Rev. S.
Thelwall.]
————————————
Modesty, the flower of manners,
the honour of our bodies, the grace of the sexes, the integrity of the
blood, the guarantee of our race, the basis of sanctity, the
pre-indication of every good disposition; rare though it is, and not
easily perfected, and scarce ever retained in perpetuity, will yet up
to a certain point linger in the world, if nature shall have laid the
preliminary groundwork of it, discipline persuaded to it, censorial
rigour curbed its excesses—on the hypothesis, that is, that every
mental good quality is the result either of birth, or else of training,
or else of external compulsion.
But as the conquering power of things evil is on
the increase—which is the characteristic of the last
times702
—things good are now not allowed either
to be born, so corrupted are the seminal principles; or to be trained,
so deserted are studies; nor to be enforced, so disarmed are the
laws. In fact, (the modesty) of which we are now beginning (to
treat) is by this time grown so obsolete, that it is not the abjuration
but the moderation of the appetites which modesty is believed to be;
and he is held to be chaste enough who has not been too
chaste. But let the world’s703
modesty see to itself, together with the world704
itself: together with its inherent nature, if it was wont to
originate in birth; its study, if in training; its servitude, if in
compulsion: except that it had been even more unhappy if it had
remained only to prove fruitless, in that it had not been in
God’s household that its activities had been exercised. I
should prefer no good to a vain good: what profits it that that
should exist whose existence profits not? It is our own
good things whose position is now sinking; it is the system of
Christian modesty which is being shaken to its
foundation—(Christian modesty), which derives its all from
heaven; its nature, “through the laver of
regeneration;”705
its discipline,
through the instrumentality of preaching; its censorial rigour, through
the judgments which each Testament exhibits; and is subject to a more
constant external compulsion, arising from the apprehension or the
desire of the eternal fire or kingdom.706
In opposition to this (modesty), could I not have acted
the dissembler? I hear that there has even been an edict set
forth, and a peremptory one too. The Pontifex
Maximus707
| 707 [This is irony; a
heathen epithet applied to Victor (or his successor), ironically,
because he seemed ambitious of superiority over other bishops.] | —that is,
the bishop of bishops708
| 708 Zephyrinus (de Genoude):
Zephyrinus or (his predecessor) Victor. J. B. Lightfoot, Ep.
ad Phil., 221, 222, ed. 1, 1868. [See also Robertson,
Ch. Hist., p. 121. S.] | —issues an
edict: “I remit, to such as have discharged (the
requirements of) repentance, the sins both of adultery and of
fornication.” O edict, on which cannot be inscribed,
“Good deed!” And where shall this liberality be
posted up? On the very spot, I suppose, on the very gates of the
sensual appetites, beneath the very titles of the sensual
appetites. There is the place for promulgating such repentance,
where the delinquency itself shall haunt. There is the place to
read the pardon, where entrance shall be made under the hope
thereof. But it is in the church that this (edict) is read, and
in the church that it is pronounced; and (the church) is a
virgin! Far, far from Christ’s betrothed be such a
proclamation! She, the true, the modest, the saintly, shall be
free from stain even of her ears. She has none to whom to make
such a promise; and if she have had, she does not make it; since
even the earthly temple of
God can sooner have been called by the Lord a “den of
robbers,”709
| 709 Matt. xxi. 13; Mark xi. 17; Luke xix. 46;
Jer. vii. 11. | than of adulterers
and fornicators.
This too, therefore, shall be a count in my
indictment against the Psychics; against the fellowship of sentiment
also which I myself formerly maintained with them; in order that they
may the more cast this in my teeth for a mark of fickleness.
Repudiation of fellowship is never a pre-indication of sin. As if
it were not easier to err with the majority, when it is in the company
of the few that truth is loved! But, however, a profitable
fickleness shall no more be a disgrace to me, than I should wish a
hurtful one to be an ornament. I blush not at an error which I
have ceased to hold, because I am delighted at having ceased to hold
it, because I recognise myself to be better and more modest. No
one blushes at his own improvement. Even in Christ, knowledge had
its stages of growth;710
through which stages
the apostle, too, passed. “When I was a child,” he
says, “as a child I spake, as a child I understood; but when I
became a man, those (things) which had been the child’s I
abandoned:”711
so truly did he
turn away from his early opinions: nor did he sin by becoming an
emulator not of ancestral but of Christian traditions,712
| 712 Comp. Gal. i. 14 with 2 Thess. ii. 15. | wishing even the precision of them who
advised the retention of circumcision.713
And would that the same fate might befall those, too, who obtruncate
the pure and true integrity of the flesh; amputating not the extremest
superficies, but the inmost image of modesty itself, while they promise
pardon to adulterers and fornicators, in the teeth of the primary
discipline of the Christian Name; a discipline to which heathendom
itself bears such emphatic witness, that it strives to punish that
discipline in the persons of our females rather by defilements of the
flesh than tortures; wishing to wrest from them that which they hold
dearer than life! But now this glory is being extinguished, and
that by means of those who ought with all the more constancy to refuse
concession of any pardon to defilements of this kind, that they make
the fear of succumbing to adultery and fornication their reason for
marrying as often as they please—since “better it is to
marry than to burn.”714
No doubt it is
for continence sake that incontinence is necessary—the
“burning” will be extinguished by
“fires!” Why, then, do they withal grant indulgence,
under the name of repentance, to crimes for which they furnish remedies
by their law of multinuptialism? For remedies will be idle while
crimes are indulged, and crimes will remain if remedies are idle.
And so, either way, they trifle with solicitude and negligence; by
taking emptiest precaution against (crimes) to which they grant
quarter, and granting absurdest quarter to (crimes) against which they
take precaution: whereas either precaution is not to be taken
where quarter is given, or quarter not given where precaution is taken;
for they take precaution, as if they were unwilling that something
should be committed; but grant indulgence, as if they were willing it
should be committed: whereas, if they be unwilling it should be
committed, they ought not to grant indulgence; if they be willing to
grant indulgence, they ought not to take precaution. For, again,
adultery and fornication will not be ranked at the same time among the
moderate and among the greatest sins, so that each course may be
equally open with regard to them—the solicitude which takes
precaution, and the security which grants indulgence. But since
they are such as to hold the culminating place among crimes, there is
no room at once for their indulgence as if they were moderate, and for
their precaution as if they were greatest. But by us
precaution is thus also taken against the greatest, or, (if you will),
highest (crimes, viz.,) in that it is not permitted, after
believing, to know even a second marriage, differentiated though it be,
to be sure, from the work of adultery and fornication by the nuptial
and dotal tablets: and accordingly, with the utmost strictness,
we excommunicate digamists, as bringing infamy upon the Paraclete by
the irregularity of their discipline. The self-same liminal limit
we fix for adulterers also and fornicators; dooming them to pour forth
tears barren of peace, and to regain from the Church no ampler return
than the publication of their disgrace.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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