13. What therefore he says,
“She, that is unmarried, thinketh of the things of the Lord, that
she may be holy both in body and spirit;” we are not to take in
such sense, as to think that a chaste Christian wife is not holy in
body. Forsooth unto all the faithful it was said, “Know ye not
that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Ghost within you, Whom ye
have from God?”1971
Therefore the bodies also of the
married are holy, so long as they keep
faith to one another and to
God. And that this sanctity of either of them, even an unbelieving
partner does not stand in the way of, but rather that the sanctity
of the
wife profits the unbelieving
husband, and the sanctity of
the
husband profits the unbelieving
wife, the same
Apostle is
witness, saying, “For the unbelieving
husband is sanctified in
the
wife, and the unbelieving
wife is sanctified in a
brother.”
1972
Wherefore
that was said according to the greater sanctity of the
unmarried
than of the
married, unto which there is also due a greater
reward,
according as, the one being a good, the other is a greater good:
inasmuch as also she has this thought only, how to please the
Lord.
For it is not that a
female who believes, keeping
married chastity,
thinks not how to please the
Lord; but assuredly less so, in that
she thinks of the things of the
world, how to please her husband.
For this is what he would say of them, that they may, in a certain
way, find themselves obliged by marriage to think of the things of
the world, how to please their husbands.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
