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| XV
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Chapter XV.
But the
ways in our life which turn aside towards sin are innumerable; and
their number is told by Scripture in divers manners. “Many are
they that trouble me and persecute,” and “Many are they
that fight against me from on high1446
| 1446 Ps. lvi. 3 (from LXX.
according to many mss.: others join
ἀπὸ ὔψους
ἡμέρας οὐ
φοβηθήσομαι, ab altitudine diei non timebo). But Aquila has
ὕψιστε, agreeing
with the Hebrew; so also Jerome. | ”; and
many other texts like that. We may affirm, indeed, absolutely, that
many are they who plot in the adulterer’s fashion to destroy this
truly honourable marriage, and to defile this inviolate bed; and if we
must name them one by one, we charge with this adulterous spirit anger,
avarice, envy, revenge, enmity, malice, hatred, and whatever the
Apostle puts in the class of those things which are contrary to sound
doctrine. Now let us suppose a lady, prepossessing and lovely above her
peers, and on that account wedded to a king, but besieged because of
her beauty by profligate lovers. As long as she remains indignant at
these would-be seducers and complains of them to her lawful husband,
she keeps her chastity and has no one before her eyes but her
bridegroom; the profligates find no vantage ground for their attack
upon her. But if she were to listen to a single one of them, her
chastity with regard to the rest would not exempt her from the
retribution; it would be sufficient to condemn her, that she had
allowed that one to defile the marriage bed. So the soul whose life is
in God will find her pleasure1447
| 1447 οὐδενὶ
ἀρεσθήσεται. The Vatican Cod. has ἐραθήσεται, which would require the genitive. | in no single one of
those things which make a beauteous show to deceive her. If she were,
in some fit of weakness, to admit the defilement to her heart, she
would herself have broken the covenant of her spiritual marriage; and,
as the Scripture tells us, “into the malicious soul Wisdom cannot
come1448
.” It may, in a word, be truly said
that the Good Husband cannot come to dwell with the soul that is
irascible, or malice-bearing, or harbours any other disposition which
jars with that concord. No way has been discovered of harmonizing
things whose nature is antagonistic and which have nothing in common.
The Apostle tells us there is “no communion of light with
darkness1449
,” or of righteousness with
iniquity, or, in a word, of all the qualities which we perceive and
name as the essence of God’s nature, with all the opposite which
are perceived in evil. Seeing, then, the impossibility of any union
between mutual repellents, we understand that the vicious soul is
estranged from entertaining the company of the Good. What then is the
practical lesson from this? The chaste and thoughtful virgin must sever
herself from any affection which can in any way impart contagion to her
soul; she must keep herself pure for the Husband who has married her,
“not having spot or blemish or any such thing1450
| 1450 Eph. v. 27.—Origen (c.
Cels. vii. 48, 49), comparing Pagan and Christian virginity, says,
“The Athenian hierophant, distrusting his power of self-control
for the period of his regular religious duties, uses hemlock, and
passes as pure. But you may see among the Christians men who need no
hemlock. The Faith drives evil from their minds, and ever fits them to
perform the service of prayer. Belonging to some of the gods now in
vogue there are certainly virgins here and there—watched or not I
care not now to inquire—who seem not to break down in the course
of chastity which the honour of their god requires. But amongst
Christians, for no repute amongst men, for no stipend, for no mere
show, they practise an absolute virginity; and as they ‘liked to
retain God in their knowledge,’ so God has kept them in that
liking mind, and in the performance of fitting works, filling them with
righteousness and goodness. I say this without any depreciation of what
is beautiful in Greek thought, and of what is wholesome in their
teachings. I wish only to show that all they have said, and things more
noble, more divine, have been said by those men of God, the prophets
and apostles.” | .”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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