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| Peter Addresses Mattidia.
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Chapter
XX.—Peter Addresses Mattidia.
While Peter was saying this, he saw the good and
chaste Mattidia weeping for joy; but thinking that she was grieved at
having suffered so much in past times, he said:1187
| 1187 [Something
similar to chaps. 20, 21, occurs in Recognitions, vii. 38,
addressed to the sons of Mattidia after her baptism. But this is
so much fuller.—R.] | “Take courage, O woman; for
while many have suffered many evils on account of adultery, you have
suffered on account of chastity, and therefore you did not die.
But if you had died, your soul would have been saved. You left
your native city of Rome on account of chastity, but through it you
found the truth, the diadem of the eternal kingdom. You underwent
danger in the deep, but you did not die; and even if you had died, the
deep itself would have proved to you, dying on account of chastity, a
baptism for the salvation of your soul. You were deprived of your
children for a little; but these, the true offspring of your husband,
have been found in better circumstances. When starving, you
begged for food, but you did not defile your body by fornication.
You exposed your body to torture, but you saved your soul; you fled
from the adulterer, that you might not defile the couch of your
husband: but, on account of your chastity, God, who knows your
flight, will fill up the place of your husband. Grieved and left
desolate, you were for a short time deprived of husband and children,
but all these you must have been deprived of, some time or other, by
death, the preordained lot of man. But better is it that you were
willingly deprived of them on account of chastity, than that you should
have perished unwillingly after a time, simply on account of
sins.
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