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| Chapter XIII
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Chapter
XIII.
But seeing that Paradise is the home of living spirits, and will not
admit those who are dead in sin, and that we on the other hand are
fleshly, subject to death, and sold under sin1430
| 1430 ὑπὸ
τὴν
ἁμαρτίαν should perhaps be restored from Rom. vii. 14; though the Paris
Edit. has ὑπὸ τῆς
ἁμαρτίας. | ,
how is it possible that one who is a subject of death’s empire
should ever dwell in this land where all is life? What method of
release from this jurisdiction can be devised? Here too the Gospel
teaching is abundantly sufficient. We hear our Lord saying to
Nicodemus, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit1431
.” We know too that the flesh is
subject to death because of sin, but the Spirit of God is both
incorruptible, and life-giving, and deathless. As at our physical birth
there comes into the world with us a potentiality of being again turned
to dust, plainly the Spirit also imparts a life-giving potentiality to
the children begotten by Himself. What lesson, then, results from these
remarks? This: that we should wean ourselves from this life in the
flesh, which has an inevitable follower, death; and that we should
search for a manner of life which does not bring death in its train.
Now the life of Virginity is such a life. We will add a few other
things to show how true this is. Every one knows that the propagation
of mortal frames is the work which the intercourse of the sexes has to
do; whereas for those who are joined to the Spirit, life and
immortality instead of children are produced by this latter
intercourse; and the words of the Apostle beautifully suit their case,
for the joyful mother of such children as these “shall be saved
in child-bearing1432
;” as the
Psalmist in his divine songs thankfully cries, “He maketh the
barren woman to keep house, and to be a joyful mother of children1433
.” Truly a joyful mother is the virgin
mother who by the operation of the Spirit conceives the deathless
children, and who is called by the Prophet barren because of her
modesty only. This life, then, which is stronger than the power of
death, is, to those who think, the preferable one. The physical
bringing of children into the world—I speak without wishing to
offend—is as much a starting-point of death as of life; because
from the moment of birth the process of dying commences. But those who
by virginity have desisted from this process have drawn within
themselves the boundary line of death, and by their own deed have
checked his advance; they have made themselves, in fact, a frontier
between life and death, and a barrier too, which thwarts him. If, then,
death cannot pass beyond virginity, but finds his power checked and
shattered there, it is demonstrated that virginity is a stronger thing
than death; and that body is rightly named undying which does not lend
its service to a dying world, nor brook to become the instrument of a
succession of dying creatures. In such a body the long unbroken career
of decay and death, which has intervened between1434
| 1434 διὰ μέσου οὐ
γέγονεν. So
Codd. Reg. Vat.; but the οὐ is manifestly a corruption
arising from μέσου. | the first man and the lives of virginity
which have been led, is interrupted. It could not be indeed that death
should cease working as long as the human race by marriage was working
too; he walked the path of life with all preceding generations; he
started with every new-born child and accompanied it to the end: but he
found in virginity a barrier, to pass which was an impossible feat.
Just as, in the age of Mary the mother of God, he who had reigned from
Adam to her time found, when he came to her and dashed his forces
against the fruit of her virginity as against a rock, that he was shattered to
pieces upon her, so in every soul which passes through this life in the
flesh under the protection of virginity, the strength of death is in a
manner broken and annulled, for he does not find the places upon which
he may fix his sting. If you do not throw into the fire wood, or straw,
or grass, or something that it can consume, it has not the force to
last by itself; so the power of death cannot go on working, if marriage
does not supply it with material and prepare victims for this
executioner. If you have any doubts left, consider the actual names of
those afflictions which death brings upon mankind, and which were
detailed in the first part of this discourse. Whence do they get their
meaning? “Widowhood,” “orphanhood,” “loss
of children,” could they be a subject for grief, if marriage did
not precede? Nay, all the dearly-prized blisses, and transports, and
comforts of marriage end in these agonies of grief. The hilt of a sword
is smooth and handy, and polished and glittering outside; it seems to
grow to the outline of the hand1435
| 1435 ἐμφυομένη; cf. the Homeric ἐν
δ᾽ἄρα οἱ φῦ
χειρί, κ. τ. λ | ; but the other
part is steel and the instrument of death, formidable to look at, more
formidable still to come across. Such a thing is marriage. It offers
for the grasp of the senses a smooth surface of delights, like a hilt
of rare polish and beautiful workmanship; but when a man has taken it
up and has got it into his hands, he finds the pain that has been
wedded to it is in his hands as well; and it becomes to him the worker
of mourning and of loss. It is marriage that has the heartrending
spectacles to show of children left desolate in the tenderness of their
years, a mere prey to the powerful, yet smiling often at their
misfortune from ignorance of coming woes. What is the cause of
widowhood but marriage? And retirement from this would bring with it an
immunity from the whole burden of these sad taxes on our hearts. Can we
expect it otherwise? When the verdict that was pronounced on the
delinquents in the beginning is annulled, then too the mothers’
“sorrows1436
” are no
longer “multiplied,” nor does “sorrow” herald
the births of men; then all calamity has been removed from life and
“tears wiped from off all faces1437
;” conception is no more an iniquity,
nor child-bearing a sin; and births shall be no more “of
bloods,” or “of the will of man,” or “of the
will of the flesh1438
”, but of God
alone. This is always happening whenever any one in a lively heart
conceives all the integrity of the Spirit, and brings forth wisdom and
righteousness, and sanctification and redemption too. It is possible
for any one to be the mother of such a son; as our Lord says, “He
that doeth my will is my brother, my sister, and my mother1439
.” What room is there for death in such
parturitions? Indeed in them death is swallowed up by life. In fact,
the Life of Virginity seems to be an actual representation of the
blessedness in the world to come, showing as it does in itself so many
signs of the presence of those expected blessings which are reserved
for us there. That the truth of this statement may be perceived, we
will verify it thus. It is so, first, because a man who has thus died
once for all to sin lives for the future to God; he brings forth no
more fruit unto death; and having so far as in him lies made an end1440
of this life within him according to the
flesh, he awaits thenceforth the expected blessing of the
manifestation1441
of the great God,
refraining from putting any distance between himself and this coming of
God by an intervening posterity: secondly, because he enjoys even in
this present life a certain exquisite glory of all the blessed results
of our resurrection. For our Lord has announced that the life after our
resurrection shall be as that of the angels. Now the peculiarity of the
angelic nature is that they are strangers to marriage; therefore the
blessing of this promise has been already received by him who has not
only mingled his own glory with the halo of the Saints, but also by the
stainlessness of his life has so imitated the purity of these
incorporeal beings. If virginity then can win us favours such as these,
what words are fit to express the admiration of so great a grace? What
other gift of the soul can be found so great and precious as not to
suffer by comparison with this perfection?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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