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| Chapter XIV
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Chapter
XIV.
But if
we apprehend at last the perfection of this grace, we must understand
as well what necessarily follows from it; namely that it is not a
single achievement, ending in the subjugation of the body, but that in
intention it reaches to and pervades everything that is, or is
considered, a right condition of the soul. That soul indeed which in
virginity cleaves to the true Bridegroom will not remove herself merely
from all bodily defilement; she will make that abstension only the
beginning of her purity, and will carry this security from failure
equally into everything else upon her path. Fearing lest, from a too
partial heart, she should by contact with evil in any one direction
give occasion for the least weakness of unfaithfulness (to
suppose such a case: but I will begin again what I was going to say), that
soul which cleaves to her Master so as to become with Him one spirit,
and by the compact of a wedded life has staked the love of all her
heart and all her strength on Him alone—that soul will no more
commit any other of the offences contrary to salvation, than imperil
her union with Him by cleaving to fornication; she knows that between
all sins there is a single kinship of impurity, and that if she were to
defile herself with but one1442
| 1442 The
text is here due to the Vatican Codex: καὶ εἰ
δι᾽ἑνός
τινος
μολυνθείη, κ.
τ. λ. | , she could no
longer retain her spotlessness. An illustration will show what we mean.
Suppose all the water in a pool remaining smooth and motionless, while
no disturbance of any kind comes to mar the peacefulness of the spot;
and then a stone thrown into the pool; the movement in that one part1443
| 1443 τῷ μέρει. This is the reading of Cod. Morell. and of the fragment used by
Livineius; preferable to τῷ μερικῷ
σάλῳ
συγκυματούμενον, as in Cod. Reg. | will extend to the whole, and while the
stone’s weight is carrying it to the bottom, the waves that are
set in motion round it pass in circles1444
| 1444 κυκλοτερῶς, Plutarch, ii. 892, F. |
into others, and so through all the intervening commotion are pushed on
to the very edge of the water, and the whole surface is ruffled with
these circles, feeling the movement of the depths. So is the broad
serenity and calm of the soul troubled by one invading passion, and
affected by the injury of a single part. They tell us too, those who
have investigated the subject, that the virtues are not disunited from
each other, and that to grasp the principle of any one virtue will be
impossible to one who has not seized that which underlies the rest, and
that the man who shows one virtue in his character will necessarily
show them all. Therefore, by contraries, the depravation of anything in
our moral nature will extend to the whole virtuous life; and in very
truth, as the Apostle tells us, the whole is affected by the parts, and
“if one member1445
suffer, all the
members suffer with it,” “if one be honoured, all
rejoice.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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