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| Of the Verdict of the Apostles, Assembled in Council, Upon the Subject of Adultery.
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Chapter XII.—Of the
Verdict of the Apostles, Assembled in Council, Upon the Subject of
Adultery.
Accordingly, these who have received
“another Paraclete” in and through the apostles,—(a
Paraclete) whom, not recognising Him even in His special prophets, they
no longer possess in the apostles either;—come, now, let them,
even from the apostolic instrument, teach us the possibility that the
stains of a flesh which after baptism has been repolluted, can by
repentance be washed away. Do we not, in the apostles also,
recognise the form of the Old Law with regard to the demonstration of
adultery, how great (a crime) it is; lest perchance it be esteemed more
trivial in the new stage of disciplines than in the old? When
first the Gospel thundered and shook the old system to its base, when
dispute was being held on the question of retaining or not the Law;
this is the first rule which the apostles, on the authority of the Holy
Spirit, send out to those who were already beginning to be gathered to
their side out of the nations: “It has seemed
(good),” say they, “to the Holy Spirit and to us to cast
upon you no ampler weight than (that) of those (things) from which it
is necessary that abstinence be observed; from sacrifices, and from
fornications, and from blood:822
by abstaining
from which ye act rightly, the Holy Spirit carrying you.”
Sufficient it is, that in this place withal there has been preserved to
adultery and fornication the post of their own honour between idolatry
and murder: for
the interdict upon “blood” we shall understand to be (an
interdict) much more upon human blood. Well, then, in what
light do the apostles will those crimes to appear which alone they
select, in the way of careful guarding against, from the pristine Law?
which alone they prescribe as necessarily to be abstained from?
Not that they permit others; but that these alone they put in the
foremost rank, of course as not remissible; (they,) who, for the
heathens’ sake, made the other burdens of the law
remissible. Why, then, do they release our neck from so heavy a
yoke, except to place forever upon those (necks) these compendia of
discipline? Why do they indulgently relax so many bonds, except
that they may wholly bind us in perpetuity to such as are more
necessary? They loosed us from the more numerous, that we might
be bound up to abstinence from the more noxious. The matter has
been settled by compensation: we have gained much, in order that
we may render somewhat. But the compensation is not revocable;
if, that is, it will be revoked by iteration—(iteration) of
adultery, of course, and blood and idolatry: for it will follow
that the (burden of) the whole law will be incurred, if the condition
of pardon shall be violated. But it is not lightly that the Holy
Spirit has come to an agreement with us—coming to this agreement
even without our asking; whence He is the more to be honoured.
His engagement none but an ungrateful man will dissolve. In that
event, He will neither accept back what He has discarded, nor discard
what He has retained. Of the latest Testament the condition is
ever immutable; and, of course the public recitation of that
decree,823
| 823 See Acts xv.
30 and xvi. 4. | and the counsel embodied therein, will cease
(only) with the world.824
He has
definitely enough refused pardon to those crimes the careful avoidance
whereof He selectively enjoined; He has claimed whatever He has not
inferentially conceded. Hence it is that there is no restoration
of peace granted by the Churches to “idolatry” or to
“blood.” From which final decision of theirs that the
apostles should have departed, is (I think) not lawful to believe; or
else, if some find it possible to believe so, they will be bound to
prove it.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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