4. Lo, there is your good
compared to that good, which the Apostle calls his own, if faith be
present: yea, rather, because faith is present. Short is this
teaching, yet not on this account to be despised, because it is
short; but on this account to be retained the more easily and the
more dearly, in that in shortness it is not cheap. For it is not
every kind of good soever, which the Apostle would here set forth,
which he hath unambiguously placed above the faith of married
women. But how great good the faith of married women, that is, of
Christian and religious women joined in marriage, hath, may be
understood from this, that, when he was giving charge for the
avoiding of fornication, wherein assuredly he was addressing
married persons also, he saith, “Know ye not that your bodies are
the members of Christ?”2226
So great then is the good of
faithful marriage, that even the very members are (members) of
Christ. But, forasmuch as the good of widowed continence is better
than this good, the purpose of this profession is, not that a
catholic
widow be any thing more than a member of
Christ, but that
she have a better place, than a
married woman, among the members of
Christ. Forsooth the same
Apostle says, “For, as in one body we
have many members, but all members have not the same course of
action; so being many we are one body in Christ, and each members
one of another: having gifts diverse according unto the grace,
which hath been given unto us.”
2227
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