3. This we now say, that,
according to this condition of being born and dying, which we know,
and in which we have been created, the marriage of male and female
is some good; the compact whereof divine Scripture so commends, as
that neither is it allowed one put away by her husband to marry, so
long as her husband lives: nor is it allowed one put away by his
wife to marry another, unless she who have separated from him be
dead. Therefore, concerning the good of marriage, which the Lord
also confirmed in the Gospel, not only in that He forbade to put
away a wife,1940
save
because of
fornication, but also in that He came by invitation to a
marriage,
1941
there is
good ground to inquire for what reason it be a good. And this seems
not to me to be merely on account of the begetting of
children, but
also on account of the
natural society itself in a difference of
sex. Otherwise it would not any longer be called
marriage in the
case of old persons, especially if either they had lost sons, or
had given
birth to none. But now in good, although aged,
marriage,
albeit there hath withered away the glow of full age between male
and
female, yet there lives in full vigor the order of
charity
between
husband and
wife: because, the better they are, the earlier
they have begun by mutual consent to contain from sexual
intercourse with each other: not that it should be matter of
necessity afterwards not to have
power to do what they would, but
that it should be matter of
praise to have been
unwilling at the
first, to do what they had
power to do. If therefore there be kept
good
faith of
honor, and of services mutually due from either sex,
although the members of either be languishing and almost
corpse-like, yet of
souls duly joined together, the chastity
1942
continues,
the purer by how much it is the more
proved, the safer, by how much
it is the calmer. Marriages have this good also, that
carnal or
youthful incontinence, although it be faulty, is brought unto an
honest use in the begetting of
children, in order that out of the
evil of
lust the
marriage union may bring to pass some good. Next,
in that the
lust of the
flesh is repressed, and
rages in a way more
modestly, being tempered by parental affection. For there is
interposed a certain gravity of glowing
pleasure, when in that
wherein
husband and wife cleave to one another, they have in mind
that they be father and mother.
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