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| By What Judgment of God the Enemy Was Permitted to Indulge His Lust on the Bodies of Continent Christians.
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Chapter 28.—By What Judgment of
God the Enemy Was Permitted to Indulge His Lust on the Bodies of
Continent Christians.
Let not your life, then, be a
burden to you, ye faithful servants of Christ, though your chastity
was made the sport of your enemies. You have a grand and true
consolation, if you maintain a good conscience, and know that you
did not consent to the sins of those who were permitted to commit
sinful outrage upon you. And if you should ask why this
permission was granted, indeed it is a deep providence of the
Creator and Governor of the world; and “unsearchable are His
judgments, and His ways past finding out.”82
Nevertheless, faithfully
interrogate your own souls, whether ye have not been unduly puffed
up by your integrity, and continence, and chastity; and whether ye
have not been so desirous of the human praise that is accorded to
these virtues, that ye have envied some who possessed them. I,
for my part, do not know your hearts, and therefore I make no
accusation; I do not even hear what your hearts answer when you
question them. And yet, if they answer that it is as I have
supposed it might be, do not marvel that you have lost that by
which you can win men’s praise, and retain that which cannot be
exhibited to men. If you did not consent to sin, it was because
God added His aid to His grace that it might not be lost, and
because shame before men succeeded to human glory that it might not
be loved. But in both respects even the faint-hearted among you
have a consolation, approved by the one experience, chastened by
the other; justified by the one, corrected by the other. As to
those whose hearts, when interrogated, reply that they have never
been proud of the virtue of virginity, widowhood, or matrimonial
chastity, but, condescending to those of low estate, rejoiced with
trembling in these gifts of God, and that they have never envied
any one the like excellences of sanctity and purity, but rose
superior to human applause, which is wont to be abundant in
proportion to the rarity of the virtue applauded, and rather
desired that their own number be increased,
than that by
the smallness of their numbers each of them should be
conspicuous;—even such faithful women, I say, must not complain
that permission was given to the barbarians so grossly to outrage
them; nor must they allow themselves to believe that God overlooked
their character when He permitted acts which no one with impunity
commits. For some most flagrant and wicked desires are allowed
free play at present by the secret judgment of God, and are
reserved to the public and final judgment. Moreover, it is
possible that those Christian women, who are unconscious of any
undue pride on account of their virtuous chastity, whereby they
sinlessly suffered the violence of their captors, had yet some
lurking infirmity which might have betrayed them into a proud and
contemptuous bearing, had they not been subjected to the
humiliation that befell them in the taking of the city. As,
therefore, some men were removed by death, that no wickedness might
change their disposition, so these women were outraged lest
prosperity should corrupt their modesty. Neither those women
then, who were already puffed up by the circumstance that they were
still virgins, nor those who might have been so puffed up had they
not been exposed to the violence of the enemy, lost their chastity,
but rather gained humility; the former were saved from pride
already cherished, the latter from pride that would shortly have
grown upon them.
We must further notice that some of
those sufferers may have conceived that continence is a bodily
good, and abides so long as the body is inviolate, and did not
understand that the purity both of the body and the soul rests on
the steadfastness of the will strengthened by God’s grace, and
cannot be forcibly taken from an unwilling person. From this
error they are probably now delivered. For when they reflect how
conscientiously they served God, and when they settle again to the
firm persuasion that He can in nowise desert those who so serve
Him, and so invoke His aid and when they consider, what they cannot
doubt, how pleasing to Him is chastity, they are shut up to the
conclusion that He could never have permitted these disasters to
befall His saints, if by them that saintliness could be destroyed
which He Himself had bestowed upon them, and delights to see in
them. E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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