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Letter
XLVIII. To Pammachius.
An “apology” for the two books
“against Jovinian” which Jerome had written a short time
previously, and of which he had sent copies to Rome. These Pammachius
and his other friends had withheld from publication, thinking that
Jerome had unduly exalted virginity at the expense of marriage. He now
writes to make good his position, and to do this makes copious extracts
from the obnoxious treatise. The date of the letter is 393 or 394 a.d.
1. Your own silence is my reason for not having written
hitherto. For I feared that, if I were to write to you without first
hearing from you, you would consider me not so much a conscientious as
a troublesome correspondent. But, now that I have been challenged by
your most delightful letter, a letter which calls upon me to defend my
views by an appeal to first principles, I receive my old
fellow-learner, companion, and friend with open arms, as the saying
goes; and I look forward to having in you a champion of my poor
writings; if, that is to say, I can first conciliate your judgment to
give sentence in my favor, and can instruct my advocate in all those
points on which I am assailed. For both your favorite, Cicero, and
before him—in his one short treatise—Antonius,1037
| 1037 Marcus Antonius, a
Roman orator spoken of by Cicero. Orator c. 5, De Oratore i. c. 21, 47,
48. His treatise “De ratione dicendi” is lost. See Quintal
iii. 1, 192. | write to this effect, that the chief
requisite for victory is to acquaint one’s self carefully with
the case which one has to plead.
2. Certain persons find fault with me because in the
books which I have written against Jovinian I have been excessive (so
they say) in praise of virginity and in depreciation of marriage; and
they affirm that to preach up chastity till no comparison is left
between a wife and a virgin is equivalent to a condemnation of
matrimony. If I remember aright the point of the dispute, the question
at issue between myself and Jovinian is that he puts marriage on a
level with virginity, while I make it inferior; he declares that there
is little or no difference between the two states, I assert that there
is a great deal. Finally—a result due under God to your
agency—he has been condemned because he has dared to set
matrimony on an equality with perpetual chastity. Or, if a virgin and a
wife are to be looked on as the same, how comes it that Rome has
refused to listen to this impious doctrine? A virgin owes her being to
a man, but a man does not owe his to a virgin. There can be no middle
course. Either my view of the matter must be embraced, or else that of
Jovinian. If I am blamed for putting wedlock below virginity, he must be praised for
putting the two states on a level. If, on the other hand, he is
condemned for supposing them equal, his condemnation must be taken as
testimony in favor of my treatise. If men of the world chafe under the
notion that they occupy a position inferior to that of virgins, I
wonder that clergymen and monks—who both live celibate
lives—refrain from praising what they consistently practise. They
cut themselves off from their wives to imitate the chastity of virgins,
and yet they will have it that married women are as good as these. They
should either be joined again to their wives whom they have renounced,
or, if they persist in living apart from them, they will have to
confess—by their lives if not by their words—that, in
preferring virginity to marriage, they have chosen the better course.
Am I then a mere novice in the Scriptures, reading the sacred volumes
for the first time? And is the line there drawn between virginity and
marriage so fine that I have been unable to observe it? I could know
nothing, forsooth, of the saying, “Be not righteous
overmuch!”1038
Thus, while I
try to protect myself on one side, I am wounded on the other; to speak
more plainly still, while I close with Jovinian in hand-to-hand combat,
Manichæus stabs me in the back. Have I not, I would ask, in the
very forefront of my work set the following preface:1039
“We are no disciples of Marcion1040
| 1040 A Gnostic presbyter of
the second century who rejected the Old Testament. | or of Manichæus,1041
| 1041 An Eastern teacher of
the third century, a.d., the main feature of
whose system was its uncompromising dualism. | to
detract from marriage. Nor are we deceived by the error of Tatian,1042
| 1042 A Syrian rhetorician
converted to Christianity by Justin Martyr. He wrote a harmony of the
Gospels called Diatessaron. | the chief of the Encratites,1043
| 1043 I.e.
“the abstainers,” or “the continent,” a Gnostic
sect in the second century. | into supposing all cohabitation unclean.
For he condemns and reprobates not marriage only, but foods also which
God has created for us to enjoy.1044
We know that
in a large house there are vessels not only of silver and of gold, but
of wood also and of earth.1045
We know, too, that
on the foundation of Christ which Paul the master builder has laid,
some build up gold, silver, and precious stones; others, on the
contrary, hay, wood, and stubble.1046
We are not
ignorant that ‘marriage is honorable…and the bed
undefiled.’1047
We have read the
first decree of God: ‘Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the
earth.’1048
But while we
allow marriage, we prefer the virginity which springs from it. Gold is
more precious than silver, but is silver on that account the less
silver? Is it an insult to a tree to prefer its apples to its roots or
its leaves? Is it an injury to corn to put the ear before the stalk and
the blade? As apples come from the tree and grain from the straw, so
virginity comes from wedlock. Yields of one hundredfold, of sixtyfold,
and of thirtyfold1049
may all come from
one soil and from one sowing, yet they will differ widely in quantity.
The yield thirtyfold signifies wedlock, for the joining together of the
fingers to express that number, suggestive as it is of a loving gentle
kiss or embracing, aptly represents the relation of husband and wife.
The yield sixtyfold refers to widows who are placed in a position of
distress and tribulation. Accordingly, they are typified by that finger
which is placed under the other to express the number sixty; for, as it
is extremely trying when one has once tasted pleasure to abstain from
its enticements, so the reward of doing this is proportionately great.
Moreover, a hundred—I ask the reader to give me his best
attention—necessitates a change from the left hand to the right;
but while the hand is different the fingers are the same as those which
on the left hand signify married women and widows; only in this
instance the circle formed by them indicates the crown of
virginity.”1050
| 1050 From this passage
compared with Ep. cxxiii. 9, and Bede De Temporum Ratione, c. 1. (De
Loquetâ Digitorum), it appears that the number thirty was
indicated by joining the tips of the thumb and forefinger of the left
hand, sixty was indicated by curling up the forefinger of the same hand
and then doubling the thumb over it, while one hundred was expressed by
joining the tips of the thumb and forefinger of the right hand. See
Prof. Mayor’s learned note on Juv. x. 249. |
3. Does a man who speaks thus, I would ask you, condemn
marriage? If I have called virginity gold, I have spoken of marriage as
silver. I have set forth that the yields an hundredfold, sixtyfold, and
thirtyfold—all spring from one soil and from one sowing, although
in amount they differ widely. Will any of my readers be so unfair as to
judge me, not by my words, but by his own opinion? At any rate, I have
dealt much more gently with marriage than most Latin and Greek
writers;1051
| 1051 E.g. Cyprian and
Origen (Hom. i. in Jos.). | who, by referring the hundredfold yield
to martyrs, the sixtyfold to virgins, and the thirtyfold to widows,
show that in their opinion married persons are excluded from the good
ground and from the seed of the great Father.1052
| 1052 Paterfamilias.
Vide Cypr. de Hab. Virg. 21. |
But, lest it might be supposed that, though cautious at the outset, I
was imprudent in the remainder of my work, have I not, after marking out the divisions of it, on
coming to the actual questions immediately introduced the following:1053
“I ask all of you of both sexes, at
once those who are virgins and continent and those who are married or
twice married, to aid my efforts with your prayers.” Jovinian is
the foe of all indiscriminately, but can I condemn as Manichæan
heretics persons whose prayers I need and whose assistance I entreat to
help me in my work?
4. As the brief compass of a letter does not suffer us
to delay too long on a single point, let us now pass to those which
remain. In explaining the testimony of the apostle, “The wife
hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise, also,
the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife,”1054
we have subjoined the following:1055
“The entire question relates to those
who are living in wedlock, whether it is lawful for them to put away
their wives, a thing which the Lord also has forbidden in the Gospel.1056
Hence, also, the apostle says: ‘It is
good for a man not to touch’ a wife or ‘a woman,’1057
as if there were danger in the contact
which he who should so touch one could not escape. Accordingly, when
the Egyptian woman desired to touch Joseph he flung away his cloak and
fled from her hands.1058
But as he who has
once married a wife cannot, except by consent, abstain from intercourse
with her or repudiate her, so long as she does not sin, he must render
unto his wife her due,1059
because he has of
his own free will bound himself to render it under compulsion.”
Can one who declares that it is a precept of the Lord that wives should
not be put away, and that what God has joined together man must not,
without consent, put asunder1060
—can such an
one be said to condemn marriage? Again, in the verses which follow, the
apostle says: “But every man hath his proper gift of God, one
after this manner, and another after that.”1061
In explanation of this saying we made the
following remarks:1062
“What I
myself would wish, he says, is clear. But since there are diversities
of gifts in the church,1063
I allow marriage
as well, that I may not appear to condemn nature. Reflect, too, that
the gift of virginity is one thing, that of marriage another. For had
there been one reward for married women and for virgins he would never,
after giving the counsel of continence, have gone on to say: ‘But
every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner and
another after that.’ Where each class has its proper gift, there
must be some distinction between the classes. I allow that marriage, as
well as virginity, is the gift of God, but there is a great difference
between gift and gift. Finally, the apostle himself says of one who had
lived in incest and afterwards repented: ‘Contrariwise ye ought
rather to forgive him and comfort him,’1064
and ‘To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also.’1065
And, lest we might suppose a man’s
gift to be but a small thing, he has added: ‘For if I forgave
anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the
sight1066
of Christ.’1067
The gifts of Christ are different. Hence Joseph as a type of Him had a
coat of many colors.1068
So in the
forty-fourth psalm1069
| 1069 Acc. to the Vulgate.
In A.V. it is the 45th. | we read of the
Church: ‘Upon thy right hand did stand the queen in a vesture of
gold, wrought about with divers colors.’1070
The apostle Peter, too, speaks (of husbands and wives) ‘as being
heirs together of the manifold grace of God.’1071
In Greek the expression is still more
striking, the word used being ποικίλη, that is,
‘many-colored.’”
5. I ask, then, what is the meaning of men’s
obstinate determination to shut their eyes and to refuse to look on
what is as clear as day? I have said that there are diversities of
gifts in the Church, and that virginity is one gift and wedlock
another. And shortly after I have used the words: “I allow
marriage also to be a gift of God, but there is a great difference
between gift and gift.” Can it be said that I condemn that which
in the clearest terms I declare to be the gift of God? Moreover, if
Joseph is taken as a type of the Lord, his coat of many colors is a
type of virgins and widows, celibates and wedded. Can any one who has
any part in Christ’s tunic be regarded as an alien? Have we not
spoken of the very queen herself—that is, the Church of the
Saviour—as wearing a vesture of gold wrought about with divers
colors? Moreover, when I came to discuss marriage in connection with
the following verses,1072
I still adhered
to the same view.1073
“This
passage,” I said, “has indeed no relation to the present
controversy; for, following the decision of the Lord, the apostle
teaches that a wife must not be put away saving for fornication, and
that, if she has been put away, she
cannot during the lifetime of her husband marry another man, or, at any
rate, that she ought, if possible, to be reconciled to her husband. In
another verse he speaks to the same effect: ‘The wife is
bound…as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead,
she is loosed from the law of her husband;1074
she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the
Lord,’1075
that is to a Christian. Thus the
apostle, while he allows a second or a third marriage in the Lord,
forbids even a first with a heathen.”
6. I ask my detractors to open their ears and to realize
the fact that I have allowed second and third marriages “in the
Lord.” If, then, I have not condemned second and third marriages,
how can I have proscribed a first? Moreover, in the passage where I
interpret the words of the apostle, “Is any man called being
circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in
uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised”1076
(a passage, it is true, which some most
careful interpreters of Scripture refer to the circumcision and slavery
of the Law), do I not in the clearest terms stand up for the
marriage-tie? My words are these:1077
“‘If any man is called in uncircumcision, let him not be
circumcised.’ You had a wife, the apostle says, when you
believed. Do not fancy your faith in Christ to be a reason for parting
from her. For ‘God hath called us in peace.’1078
‘Circumcision is nothing and
uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the commandments of
God.’1079
Neither celibacy nor wedlock is of
the slightest use without works, since even faith, the distinguishing
mark of Christians, if it have not works, is said to be dead,1080
and on such terms as these the virgins of
Vesta or of Juno, who was constant to one1081
husband, might claim to be numbered among the saints. And a little
further on he says: ‘Art thou called being a servant, care not
for it; but, if thou mayest be made free, use it rather;’1082
that is to say, if you have a wife, and
are bound to her, and render her her due, and have not power of your
own body—or, to speak yet more plainly—if you are the slave
of a wife, do not allow this to cause you sorrow, do not sigh over the
loss of your virginity. Even if you can find pretexts for parting from
her to enjoy the freedom of chastity, do not seek your own welfare at
the price of another’s ruin. Keep your wife for a little, and do
not try too hastily to overcome her reluctance. Wait till she follows
your example. If you only have patience, your wife will some day become
your sister.”
7. In another passage we have discussed the reasons
which led Paul to say: “Now concerning virgins, I have no
commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath
obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.”1083
Here also, while we have extolled
virginity, we have been careful to give marriage its due.1084
“Had the Lord commanded
virginity,” we said, “He would have seemed to condemn
marriage and to do away with that seed-plot of humanity from which
virginity itself springs. Had He cut away the root how could He have
looked for fruit? Unless He had first laid the foundations, how could
He have built the edifice or crowned it with a roof made to cover its
whole extent?” If we have spoken of marriage as the root whose
fruit is virginity, and if we have made wedlock the foundation on which
the building or the roof of perpetual chastity is raised, which of my
detractors can be so captious or so blind as to ignore the foundation
on which the fabric and its roof are built, while he has before his
eyes both the fabric and the roof themselves? Once more, in another
place, we have brought forward the testimony of the apostle to this
effect: “Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art
thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife.”1085
To this we have appended the following
remarks:1086
“Each of us has his own
sphere allotted to him. Let me have mine, and do you keep yours. If you
are bound to a wife, do not put her away. If I am loosed from a wife,
let me not seek a wife. Just as I do not loose marriage-ties when they
are once made, so do you refrain from binding together what at present
is loosed from such ties.” Yet another passage bears unmistakable
testimony to the view which we have taken of virginity and of
wedlock:1087
“The apostle casts no snare
upon us,1088
nor does he compel us to be what
we do not wish. He only urges us to what is honorable and seemly,
inciting us earnestly to serve the Lord, to be anxious always to please
Him, and to look for His will which He has prepared for us to do. We
are to be like alert and armed soldiers, who immediately execute the
orders given to them and perform them without that travail of mind1089
| 1089 Jerome here
explains the word ἀπερισπαστῶς
(A.V. “without distraction”) in 1 Cor. vii. 35. | which, according to the preacher, is given to the men
of this world ‘to be exercised therewith.’”1090
At the end, also, of our comparison of
virgins and married women we have summed up the discussion thus:1091
“When one thing is good and another
thing is better; when that which is good has a different reward from
that which is better; and when there are more rewards than one, then,
obviously, there exists a diversity of gifts. The difference between
marriage and virginity is as great as that between not doing evil and
doing good—or, to speak more favorably still, as that between
what is good and what is still better.”
8. In the sequel we go on to speak thus:1092
“The apostle, in concluding his
discussion of marriage and of virginity, is careful to observe a mean
course in discriminating between them, and, turning neither to the
right hand nor to the left, he keeps to the King’s highway,1093
and thus fulfils the injunction, ‘Be
not righteous overmuch.’1094
Moreover, when he
goes on to compare monogamy with digamy, he puts digamy after monogamy,
just as before he subordinated marriage to virginity.” Do we not
clearly show by this language what is typified in the Holy Scriptures
by the terms right and left, and also what we take to be the meaning of
the words “Be not righteous overmuch”? We turn to the left
if, following the lust of Jews and Gentiles, we burn for sexual
intercourse; we turn to the right if, following the error of the
Manichæans, we under a pretence of chastity entangle ourselves in
the meshes of unchastity. But we keep to the King’s highway if we
aspire to virginity yet refrain from condemning marriage. Can any one,
moreover, be so unfair in his criticism of my poor treatise as to
allege that I condemn first marriages, when he reads my opinion on
second ones as follows:1095
“The apostle,
it is true, allows second marriages, but only to such women as are bent
upon them, to such as cannot contain,1096
lest ‘when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ they
marry, having condemnation because they have rejected their first
faith,’1097
and he makes this
concession because many ‘are turned aside after Satan.’1098
But they will be happier if they abide as
widows. To this he immediately adds his apostolical authority,
‘after my judgment.’ Moreover, lest any should consider
that authority, being human, to be of small weight, he goes on to say,
‘and I think also that I have the spirit of God.’1099
Thus, where he urges men to continence he
appeals not to human authority, but to the Spirit of God; but when he
gives them permission to marry he does not mention the Spirit of God,
but allows prudential considerations to turn the balance, relaxing the
strictness of his code in favor of individuals according to their
several needs.” Having thus brought forward proofs that second
marriages are allowed by the apostle, we at once added the remarks
which follow:1100
“As marriage is
permitted to virgins by reason of the danger of fornication, and as
what in itself is not desirable is thus made excusable, so by reason of
the same danger widows are permitted to marry a second time. For it is
better that a woman should know one man (though he should be a second
husband or a third) than that she should know several. In other words,
it is preferable that she should prostitute herself to one rather than
to many.” Calumny may do its worst. We have spoken here not of a
first marriage, but of a second, of a third, or (if you like) of a
fourth. But lest any one should apply my words (that it is better for a
woman to prostitute herself to one man than to several) to a first
marriage when my whole argument dealt with digamy and trigamy, I marked
my own view of these practices with the words:1101
“‘All things are lawful, but all things are not
expedient.’1102
I do not condemn
digamists nor yet trigamists, nor even, to put an extreme, case,
octogamists. I will make a still greater concession: I am ready to
receive even a whore-monger, if penitent. In every case where fairness
is possible, fair consideration must be shown.”
9. My calumniator should blush at his assertion that I
condemn first marriages when he reads my words just now quoted:
“I do not condemn digamists or trigamists, or even, to put an
extreme case, octogamists.” Not to condemn is one thing, to
commend is another. I may concede a practice as allowable and yet not
praise it as meritorious. But if I seem severe in saying, “In
every case where fairness is possible, fair consideration must be
shown,” no one, I fancy, will judge me either cruel or stern who
reads that the places prepared for virgins and for wedded persons are
different from those prepared for trigamists, octogamists, and
penitents. That Christ Himself, although in the flesh a virgin, was in
the spirit a monogamist, having one
wife, even the Church,1103
I have shown in
the latter part of my argument.1104
And yet I am
supposed to condemn marriage! I am said to condemn it, although I use
such words as these:1105
“It is an
undoubted fact that the levitical priests were descended from the stock
of Aaron, Eleazar, and Phinehas; and, as all these were married men, we
might well be confronted with them if, led away by the error of the
Encratites, we were to contend that marriage is in itself deserving of
condemnation.” Here I blame Tatian, the chief of the Encratites,
for his rejection of marriage, and yet I myself am said to condemn it!
Once more, when I contrast virgins with widows, my own words show what
my view is concerning wedlock, and set forth the threefold gradation
which I propose of virgins, widows—whether in practice or in
fact1106
| 1106 Viduitas vel
continentia. | —and wedded wives. “I do not
deny”—these are my words1107
—“the blessedness of widows who
continue such after their baptism, nor do I undervalue the merit of
wives who live in chastity with their husbands; but, just as widows
receive a greater reward from God than wives obedient to their
husbands, they, too, must be content to see virgins preferred before
themselves.”
10. Again, when explaining the witness of the apostle to
the Galatians, “By the works of the law shall no flesh be
justified,” I have spoken to the following effect:
“Marriages also are works of the law. And for this reason there
is a curse upon such as do not produce offspring. They are permitted,
it is true, even under the Gospel; but it is one thing to concede an
indulgence to what is a weakness and quite another to promise a reward
to what is a virtue.” See my express declaration that marriage is
allowed in the Gospel, yet that those who are married cannot receive
the rewards of chastity so long as they render their due one to
another. If married men feel indignant at this statement, let them vent
their anger not on me but on the Holy Scriptures; nay, more, upon all
bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and the whole company of priests and
levites, who know that they cannot offer sacrifices if they fulfil the
obligations of marriage. Again, when I adduce evidence from the
Apocalypse,1108
is it not clear what view I take
concerning virgins, widows, and wives? “These are they who sing a
new song1109
which no man can sing except he be a
virgin. These are ‘the first fruits unto God and unto the
Lamb,’1110
and they are without spot. If virgins
are the first fruits unto God, then widows and wives who live in
continence must come after the first fruits—that is to say, in
the second place and in the third.” We place widows, then, and
wives in the second place and in the third, and for this we are charged
by the frenzy of a heretic with condemning marriage altogether.
11. Throughout the book I have made many remarks in a
tone of great moderation on virginity, widowhood, and marriage. But for
the sake of brevity, I will here adduce but one passage, and that of
such a kind that no one, I think, will be found to gainsay it save some
one who wishes to prove himself malicious or mad. In describing our
Lord’s visit to the marriage at Cana in Galilee,1111
after some other remarks I have added
these:1112
“He who went but once to a
marriage has taught us that a woman should marry but once; and this
fact might tell against virginity if we failed to give marriage its due
place—after virginity that is, and chaste widowhood. But, as it
is only heretics who condemn marriage and tread under foot the
ordinance of God, we listen with gladness to every word said by our
Lord in praise of marriage. For the Church does not condemn marriage,
but only subordinates it. It does not reject it altogether, but
regulates it, knowing (as I have said above) that ‘in a great
house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of
wood and of earth; and some to honor and some to dishonor. If a man,
therefore, purge himself…he shall be a vessel unto honor
meet…and prepared unto every good work.’”1113
I listen with gladness, I say here, to
every word said by the apostle in praise of marriage. Do I listen with
gladness to the praise of marriage, and do I yet condemn marriage? The
Church, I say, does not condemn wedlock, but subordinates it. Whether
you like it or not, marriage is subordinated to virginity and
widowhood. Even when marriage continues to fulfil its function, the
Church does not condemn it, but only subordinates it; it does not
reject it, but only regulates it. It is in your power, if you will, to
mount the second step of chastity.1114
Why are you
angry if, standing on the third and lowest step, you will not make
haste to go up higher?
12. Since, then, I have so often reminded my reader of
my views; and since I have picked my way like a prudent traveller over every inch
of the road, stating repeatedly that, while I receive marriage as a
thing in itself admissible, I yet prefer continence, widowhood, and
virginity, the wise and generous reader ought to have judged what
seemed hard sayings by my general drift, and not to have charged me
with putting forward inconsistent opinions in one and the same book.
For who is so dull or so inexperienced in writing as to praise and to
condemn one and the same object, as to destroy what he has built up,
and to build up what he has destroyed; and when he has vanquished his
opponent, to turn his sword, last of all against himself? Were my
detractors country bred or unacquainted with the arts of rhetoric or of
logic, I should pardon their want of insight; nor should I censure them
for accusing me if I saw that their ignorance was in fault and not
their will. As it is men of intellect who have enjoyed a liberal
education make it their object less to understand me than to wound me,
and for such I have this short answer, that they should correct my
faults and not merely censure me for them. The lists are open, I cry;
your enemy has marshalled his forces, his position is plain, and (if I
may quote Virgil1115
| 1115 Virg. A. xi. 374,
5. | )—
The foeman calls you: meet him face to face.
Such men should answer their opponent. They ought to keep within the
limits of debate, and not to wield the schoolmaster’s rod. Their
books should aim at showing in what my statements have fallen short of
the truth, and in what they have exceeded it. For, although I will not
listen to fault-finders, I will follow the advice of teachers. To
direct the fighter how to fight when you yourself occupy a post of
vantage on the wall is a kind of teaching that does not commend itself;
and when you are yourself bathed in perfumes, it is unworthy to charge
a bleeding soldier with cowardice. Nor in saying this do I lay myself
open to a charge of boasting that while others have slept I only have
entered the lists. My meaning simply is that men who have seen me
wounded in this warfare may possibly be a little too cautious in their
methods of fighting. I would not have you engage in an encounter in
which you will have nothing to do but to protect yourself, your right
hand remaining motionless while your left manages your shield. You must
either strike or fall. I cannot account you a victor unless I see your
opponent put to the sword.
13. You are, no doubt, men of vast acquirements; but we
too have studied in the schools, and, like you, we have learned from
the precepts of Aristotle—or, rather, from those which he has
derived from Gorgias—that there are different ways of speaking;
and we know, among other things, that he who writes for display uses
one style, and he who writes to convince, another.1116
| 1116 Aliud esse γυμναστικῶς
scribere, aliud δογματικῶς
. The words do not appear to be used in this sense in the extant works
of Aristotle. | In the former case the debate is desultory;
to confute the opposer, now this argument is adduced and now that. One
argues as one pleases, saying one thing while one means another. To
quote the proverb, “With one hand one offers bread, in the other
one holds a stone.”1117
| 1117 Plaut. Aul. ii. 2,
18. | In the latter
case a certain frankness and openness of countenance are necessary. For
it is one thing to start a problem and another to expound what is
already proved. The first calls for a disputant, the second for a
teacher. I stand in the thick of the fray, my life in constant danger:
you who profess to teach me are a man of books. “Do not,”
you say, “attack unexpectedly or wound by a side-thrust. Strike
straight at your opponent. You should be ashamed to resort to feints
instead of force.” As if it were not the perfection of fighting
to menace one part and to strike another. Read, I beg of you,
Demosthenes or Cicero, or (if you do not care for pleaders whose aim is
to speak plausibly rather than truly) read Plato, Theophrastus,
Xenophon, Aristotle, and the rest of those who draw their respective
rills of wisdom from the Socratic fountain-head. Do they show any
openness? Are they devoid of artifice? Is not every word they say
filled with meaning? And does not this meaning always make for victory?
Origen, Methodius, Eusebius, and Apollinaris1118
| 1118 The reply of Origen
to Celsus is still extant; those of Methodius, Eusebius and Apollinaris
to Porphyry have perished. Cf. Letter LXX. § 3. |
write at great length against Celsus and Porphyry.1119
| 1119 Two philosophic
opponents of Christianity who flourished, the first in the second, the
second in the third, century of our era. | Consider how subtle are the arguments, how
insidious the engines with which they overthrow what the spirit of the
devil has wrought. Sometimes, it is true, they are compelled to say not
what they think but what is needful; and for this reason they employ
against their opponents the assertions of the Gentiles themselves. I
say nothing of the Latin authors, of Tertullian, Cyprian, Minutius,
Victorinus, Lactantius, Hilary, lest I should appear not so much to be
defending myself as to be assailing others. I will only mention the Apostle Paul,
whose words seem to me, as often as I hear them, to be not words, but
peals of thunder. Read his epistles, and especially those addressed to
the Romans, to the Galatians, and to the Ephesians, in all of which he
stands in the thick of the battle, and you will see how skilful and how
careful he is in the proofs which he draws from the Old Testament, and
how warily he cloaks the object which he has in view. His words seem
simplicity itself: the expressions of a guileless and unsophisticated
person—one who has no skill either to plan a dilemma or to avoid
it. Still, whichever way you look, they are thunderbolts. His pleading
halts, yet he carries every point which he takes up. He turns his back
upon his foe only to overcome him; he simulates flight, but only that
he may slay. He, then, if any one, ought to be calumniated; we should
speak thus to him: “The proofs which you have used against the
Jews or against other heretics bear a different meaning in their own
contexts to that which they bear in your epistles. We see passages
taken captive by your pen and pressed into service to win you a victory
which in the volumes from which they are taken have no controversial
bearing at all.” May he not reply to us in the words of the
Saviour: “I have one mode of speech for those that are without
and another for those that are within; the crowds hear my parables, but
their interpretation is for my disciples alone”?1120
The Lord puts questions to the Pharisees,
but does not elucidate them. To teach a disciple is one thing; to
vanquish an opponent, another. “My mystery is for me,” says
the prophet; “my mystery is for me and for them that are
mine.”1121
14. You are indignant with me because I have merely
silenced Jovinian and not instructed him. You, do I say? Nay, rather,
they who grieve to hear him anathematized, and who impeach their own
pretended orthodoxy by eulogizing in another the heresy which they hold
themselves. I should have asked him, forsooth, to surrender peaceably!
I had no right to disregard his struggles and to drag him against his
will into the bonds of truth! I might use such language had the desire
of victory induced me to say anything counter to the rule laid down in
Scripture, and had I taken the line—so often adopted by strong
men in controversy—of justifying the means by the result. As it
is, however, I have been an exponent of the apostle rather than a
dogmatist on my own account; and my function has been simply that of a
commentator. Anything, therefore, which seems a hard saying should be
imputed to the writer expounded by me rather than to me the expounder;
unless, indeed, he spoke otherwise than he is represented to have done,
and I have by an unfair interpretation wrested the plain meaning of his
words. If any one charges me with this disingenuousness let him prove
his charge from the Scriptures themselves.
I have said in my book,1122
“If ‘it is good for a man not to touch a woman,’ then
it is bad for him to touch one, for bad, and bad only, is the opposite
of good. But, if though bad it is made venial, then it is allowed to
prevent something which would be worse than bad,” and so on down
to the commencement of the next chapter. The above is my comment upon
the apostle’s words: “It is good for a man not to touch a
woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own
wife, and let every woman have her own husband.”1123
In what way does my meaning differ from
that intended by the apostle? Except that where he speaks decidedly I
do so with hesitation. He defines a dogma, I hazard an inquiry. He
openly says: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” I
timidly ask if it is good for a man not to touch one. If I thus
waver, I cannot be said to speak positively. He says: “It is good
not to touch.” I add what is a possible antithesis to
“good.” And immediately afterwards I speak thus:1124
“Notice the apostle’s
carefulness. He does not say: ‘It is good for a man not to have a
wife,’ but, ‘It is good for a man not to touch a
woman’; as if there is danger in the very touching of
one—danger which he who touches cannot escape.” You see,
therefore, that I am not expounding the law as to husbands and wives,
but simply discussing the general question of sexual
intercourse—how in comparison with chastity and virginity, the
life of angels, “It is good for a man not to touch a
woman.”
“Vanity of vanities,” says the Preacher,
“all is vanity.”1125
But if all created
things are good,1126
as being the
handiwork of a good Creator, how comes it that all things are vanity?
If the earth is vanity, are the heavens vanity too?—and the
angels, the thrones, the dominations, the powers, and the rest of the
virtues?1127
No; if things which are good in themselves as being the handiwork
of a good Creator are called vanity, it is because they are compared
with things which are better still. For example, compared with a lamp,
a lantern is good for nothing; compared with a star, a lamp does not
shine at all; the brightest star pales before the moon; put the moon
beside the sun, and it no longer looks bright; compare the sun with
Christ, and it is darkness. “I am that I am,” God says;1128
and if you compare all created things
with Him they have no existence. “Give not thy sceptre,”
says Esther, “unto them that be nothing”1129
—that is to say, to idols and demons.
And certainly they were idols and demons to whom she prayed that she
and hers might not be given over. In Job also we read how Bildad says
of the wicked man: “His confidence shall be rooted out of his
tabernacle, and destruction as a king shall trample upon him. The
companions also of him who is not shall abide in his
tabernacle.”1130
This evidently
relates to the devil, who must be in existence, otherwise he could not
be said to have companions. Still, because he is lost to God, he is
said not to be.
Now it was in a similar sense that I declared it to be a
bad thing to touch a woman—I did not say a wife—because it
is a good thing not to touch one. And I added:1131
“I call virginity fine corn, wedlock barley, and fornication
cow-dung.” Surely both corn and barley are creatures of God. But
of the two multitudes miraculously supplied in the Gospel the larger
was fed upon barley loaves, and the smaller on corn bread.1132
| 1132 Matt. xiv. 15–21; xv. 32–38. Cf.
Joh. vi. 5–13. | “Thou, Lord,” says the
psalmist, “shalt save both man and beast.”1133
I have myself said the same thing in
other words, when I have spoken of virginity as gold and of wedlock as
silver.1134
Again, in discussing1135
the one hundred and forty-four thousand
sealed virgins who were not defiled with women,1136
I have tried to show that all who have not remained virgins are
reckoned as defiled when compared with the perfect chastity of the
angels and of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if any one thinks it hard or
reprehensible that I have placed the same interval between virginity
and wedlock as there is between fine corn and barley, let him read the
book of the holy Ambrose “On Widows,” and he will find,
among other statements concerning virginity and marriage, the
following:1137
| 1137 Ambrose, On
Widowhood, xiii. 79; xiii. 81; xi. 69. | “The apostle has not
expressed his preference for marriage so unreservedly as to quench in
men the aspiration after virginity; he commences with a recommendation
of continence, and it is only subsequently that he stoops to mention
the remedies for its opposite. And although to the strong he has
pointed out the prize of their high calling,1138
yet he suffers none to faint by the
way;1139
whilst he applauds those who lead the
van, he does not despise those who bring up the rear. For he had
himself learned that the Lord Jesus gave to some barley bread, lest
they should faint by the way, but offered to others His own body, that
they should strive to attain His kingdom;”1140
and immediately afterwards: “The
nuptial tie, then, is not to be avoided as a crime, but to be refused
as a hard burden. For the law binds the wife to bring forth children in
labor and in sorrow. Her desire is to be to her husband that he should
rule over her.1141
It is not the
widow, then, but the bride, who is handed over to labor and sorrow in
childbearing. It is not the virgin, but the married woman, who is
subjected to the sway of a husband.” And in another place,
“Ye are bought,” says the apostle, “with a price;1142
be not therefore the servants of
men.”1143
You see how clearly he defines the
servitude which attends the married state. And a little farther on:
“If, then, even a good marriage is servitude, what must a bad one
be, in which husband and wife cannot sanctify, but only mutually
destroy each other?” What I have said about virginity and
marriage diffusely, Ambrose has stated tersely and pointedly,
compressing much meaning into a few words. Virginity is described by
him as a means of recommending continence, marriage as a remedy for
incontinence. And when he descends from broad principles to particular
details, he significantly holds out to virgins the prize of the high
calling, yet comforts the married, that they may not faint by the way.
While eulogizing the one class, he does not despise the other. Marriage
he compares to the barley bread set before the multitude, virginity to
the body of Christ given to the disciples. There is much less
difference, it seems to me, between barley and fine corn than between
barley and the body of Christ. Finally, he speaks of marriage as a hard
burden, to be avoided if possible, and as a badge of the most
unmistakable servitude. He makes,
also, many other statements, which he has followed up at length in his
three books “On Virgins.”
15. From all which considerations it is clear that I
have said nothing at all new concerning virginity and marriage, but
have followed in all respects the judgment of older writers—of
Ambrose, that is to say, and others who have discussed the doctrines of
the Church. “And I would sooner follow them in their faults than
copy the dull pedantry of the writers of to-day.”1144
| 1144 Ter. Andria Prol.
20, 21. | Let married men, if they please, swell
with rage because I have said,1145
“I ask you,
what kind of good thing is that which forbids a man to pray, and which
prevents him from receiving the body of Christ?” When I do my
duty as a husband, I cannot fulfil the requirements of continence. The
same apostle, in another place, commands us to pray always.1146
“But if we are always to pray we
must never yield to the claims of wedlock for, as often as I render her
due to my wife, I incapacitate myself for prayer.” When I spoke
thus it is clear that I relied on the words of the apostle:
“Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a
time, that ye may give yourselves to…prayer.”1147
The Apostle Paul tells us that when we
have intercourse with our wives we cannot pray. If, then, sexual
intercourse prevents what is less important—that is,
prayer—how much more does it prevent what is more
important—that is, the reception of the body of Christ? Peter,
too, exhorts us to continence, that our “prayers be not
hindered.”1148
How, I should
like to know, have I sinned in all this? What have I done? How have I
been in fault? If the waters of a stream are thick and muddy, it is not
the river-bed which is to blame, but the source. Am I attacked because
I have ventured to add to the words of the apostle these words of my
own: “What kind of good thing is that which prevents a man from
receiving the body of Christ?” If so, I will make answer briefly
thus: Which is the more important, to pray or to receive Christ’s
body? Surely to receive Christ’s body. If, then, sexual
intercourse hinders the less important thing, much more does it hinder
that which is the more important.
I have said in the same treatise1149
that David and they that were with him could not have lawfully eaten
the shew-bread had they not made answer that for three days they had
not been defiled with women1150
—not, of
course, with harlots, intercourse with whom was forbidden by the law,
but with their own wives, to whom they were lawfully united. Moreover,
when the people were about to receive the law on Mount Sinai they were
commanded to keep away from their wives for three days.1151
I know that at Rome it is customary for the
faithful always to receive the body of Christ, a custom which I neither
censure nor indorse. “Let every man be fully persuaded in his own
mind.”1152
But I appeal to the consciences of
those persons who after indulging in sexual intercourse on the same day
receive the communion—having first, as Persius puts it,
“washed off the night in a flowing stream,”1153
and I ask such why they do not presume to
approach the martyrs or to enter the churches.1154
| 1154 That what is now
known as reservation of the elements was practised in the early church
there is abundant evidence to show. Justin Martyr (Apol. I. 65) writes:
“The deacons communicate each of those present and carry away to
the absent of the blest bread and wine and water.” And those to
whom the eucharist was thus taken were not bound to consume it
immediately, or all at once, but might reserve a part or all for future
occasions. According to Basil (Ep. 93), “in Egypt the laity for
the most part had every one the communion in their own
houses”—and “all those who dwell alone in the desert,
when there is no priest, keep the communion at home and receive it at
their own hands.” So Jerome speaks (Letter CXXV. 20) of Exuperius
as “carrying the Lord’s body in a wicker basket, His blood
in a vessel of glass.” See the article “Reservation”
in Smith and Cheetham’s Dict. of Christian Antiquities. |
Is Christ of one mind abroad and of another at home? What is unlawful
in church cannot be lawful at home. Nothing is hidden from God.
“The night shineth as the day” before Him.1155
Let each man examine himself, and so let him
approach the body of Christ.1156
Not, of course,
that the deferring of communion for one day or for two makes a
Christian any the holier or that what I have not deserved to-day I
shall deserve to-morrow or the day after. But if I grieve that I have
not shared in Christ’s body it does help me to avoid for a little
while my wife’s embraces, and to prefer to wedded love the love
of Christ. A hard discipline, you will say, and one not to be borne.
What man of the world could bear it? He that can bear it, I reply, let
him bear it;1157
he that cannot must look to himself.
It is my business to say, not what each man can do or will do, but what
the Scriptures inculcate.
16. Again, objection has been taken to my comments on
the apostle in the following passage:1158
“But lest any should suppose from the context of the words before
quoted (namely, ‘that ye may give yourselves…to prayer and
come together again’) that the apostle desires this consummation, and does
not merely concede it to obviate a worse downfall, he immediately adds,
‘that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.’1159
‘And come together again.’ What
a noble indulgence the words convey! One which he blushes to speak of
in plainer words, which he prefers only to Satan’s temptation,
and which has its root in incontinence. Do we labor to expound this as
a dark saying when the writer has himself explained his meaning?
“I speak this,” he says, ‘by way of permission, and
not as a command.’1160
Do we still
hesitate to speak of wedlock as a thing permitted instead of as a thing
enjoined? or are we afraid that such permission will exclude second or
third marriages or some other case?” What have I said here which
the apostle has not said? The phrase, I suppose, “which he
blushes to speak of in plainer words.” I imagine that when he
says “come together,” and does not mention for what, he
takes a modest way of indicating what he does not like to name
openly—that is, sexual intercourse. Or is the objection to the
words which follow—“which he prefers only to Satan’s
temptation, and which has its root in incontinence”? Are they not
the very words of the apostle, only differently
arranged—“that Satan tempt you not for your
incontinency”? Or do people cavil because I said, “Do we
still hesitate to speak of wedlock as a thing permitted instead of as a
thing enjoined?” If this seems a hard saying, it should be
ascribed to the apostle, who says, “But I speak this by way of
permission, and not as a command,” and not to me, who, except
that I have rearranged their order, have changed neither the words nor
their meaning.
17. The shortness of a letter compels me to hasten on. I
pass, accordingly, to the points which remain. “I say,”
remarks the apostle, “to the unmarried and widows, It is good for
them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them
marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.”1161
This section I have interpreted thus:1162
“When he has granted to those who
are married the use of wedlock, and has made clear his own wishes and
concessions, he passes on to those who are unmarried or widows, and
sets before them his own example. He calls them happy if they abide
even as he,1163
but he goes on, ‘if they
cannot contain, let them marry.’ He thus repeats his former
language, ‘but only to avoid fornication,’ and ‘that
Satan tempt you not for your incontinence.’ And when he says,
‘If they cannot contain, let them marry,’ he gives as a
reason for his words that ‘it is better to marry than to
burn.’ It is only good to marry, because it is bad to burn. But
take away the fire of lust, and he will not say ‘it is better to
marry.’ For a thing is said to be better in antithesis to
something which is worse, and not simply in contrast with what is
admittedly good. It is as though he said, ‘It is better to have
one eye than none.’” Shortly afterwards, apostrophizing the
apostle, I spoke thus:1164
“If
marriage is good in itself, do not compare it with a conflagration, but
simply say, ‘It is good to marry.’ I must suspect the
goodness of a thing which only becomes a lesser evil in the presence of
a greater one. I, for my part, would have it not a lighter evil but a
downright good.” The apostle wishes unmarried women and widows to
abstain from sexual intercourse, incites them to follow his own
example, and calls them happy if they abide even as he. But if they
cannot contain, and are tempted to quench the fire of lust by
fornication rather than by continence, it is better, he tells them, to
marry than to burn. Upon which precept I have made this comment:
“It is good to marry, simply because it is bad to burn,”
not putting forward a view of my own, but only explaining the
apostle’s precept, “It is better to marry than to
burn;” that is, it is better to take a husband than to commit
fornication. If, then, you teach that burning or fornication is good,
the good will still be surpassed by what is still better.1165
But if marriage is only a degree better
than the evil to which it is preferred, it cannot be of that
unblemished perfection and blessedness which suggest a comparison with
the life of angels. Suppose I say, “It is better to be a virgin
than a married woman;” in this case I have preferred to what is
good what is still better. But suppose I go a step further and say,
“It is better to marry than to commit fornication;” in that
case I have preferred, not a better thing to a good thing, but a good
thing to a bad one. There is a wide difference between the two cases;
for, while virginity is related to marriage as better is to good,
marriage is related to fornication as good is to bad. How, I should
like to know, have I sinned in this explanation? My fixed purpose was
not to bend the Scriptures to my own wishes, but simply to say what I took to be their meaning. A
commentator has no business to dilate on his own views; his duty is to
make plain the meaning of the author whom he professes to interpret.
For, if he contradicts the writer whom he is trying to expound, he will
prove to be his opponent rather than his interpreter. When I am freely
expressing my own opinion, and not commenting upon the Scriptures, then
any one that pleases may charge me with having spoken hardly of
marriage. But if he can find no ground for such a charge, he should
attribute such passages in my commentaries as appear severe or harsh to
the author commented on, and not to me, who am only his
interpreter.
18. Another charge brought against me is simply
intolerable! It is urged that in explaining the apostle’s words
concerning husbands and wives, “Such shall have trouble in the
flesh,” I have said:1166
“We in our
ignorance had supposed that in the flesh at least wedlock would have
rejoicing. But if married persons are to have trouble in the flesh, the
only thing in which they seemed likely to have pleasure, what motive
will be left to make women marry? for, besides having trouble in spirit
and soul, they will also have it even in the flesh.”1167
Do I condemn marriage if I enumerate its
troubles, such as the crying of infants, the death of children, the
chance of abortion, domestic losses, and so forth? Whilst Damasus of
holy memory was still living, I wrote a book against Helvidius
“On the Perpetual Virginity of the Blessed Mary,” in which,
duly to extol the bliss of virginity, I was forced to say much of the
troubles of marriage. Did that excellent man—versed in Scripture
as he was, and a virgin doctor of the virgin Church—find anything
to censure in my discourse? Moreover, in the treatise which I addressed
to Eustochium1168
I used much
harsher language regarding marriage, and yet no one was offended at it.
Nay, every lover of chastity strained his ears to catch my eulogy of
continence. Read Tertullian, read Cyprian, read Ambrose, and either
accuse me with them or acquit me with them. My critics resemble the
characters of Plautus. Their only wit lies in detraction; and they try
to make themselves out men of learning by assailing all parties in
turn. Thus they bestow their censure impartially upon myself and upon
my opponent, and maintain that we are both beaten, although one or
other of us must have succeeded.
Moreover, when in discussing digamy and trigamy I have
said,1169
“It is better for a woman to know
one man, even though he be a second husband or a third, than several;
it is more tolerable for her to prostitute herself to one man than to
many,” have I not immediately subjoined my reason for so saying?
“The Samaritan woman in the Gospel, when she declares that her
present husband is her sixth, is rebuked by the Lord on the ground that
he is not her husband.”1170
For my own part, I
now once more freely proclaim that digamy is not condemned in the
Church—no, nor yet trigamy—and that a woman may marry a
fifth husband, or a sixth, or a greater number still just as lawfully
as she may marry a second; but that, while such marriages are not
condemned, neither are they commended. They are meant as alleviations
of an unhappy lot, and in no way redound to the glory of continence. I
have spoken to the same effect elsewhere.1171
“When a woman marries more than once—whether she does so
twice or three times matters little—she ceases to be a
monogamist. ‘All things are lawful…but all things are not
expedient.’1172
I do not condemn
digamists or trigamists, or even, to put an impossible case,
octogamists. Let a woman have an eighth husband if she must; only let
her cease to prostitute herself.”
19. I will come now to the passage in which I am accused
of saying that—at least according to the true Hebrew
text—the words “God saw that it was good”1173
are not inserted after the second day of
the creation, as they are after the first, third, and remaining ones,
and of adding immediately the following comment:1174
“We are meant to understand that
there is something not good in the number two, separating us as it does
from unity, and prefiguring the marriage-tie. Just as in the account of
Noah’s ark all the animals that enter by twos are unclean, but
those of which an uneven number is taken are clean.”1175
In this statement a passing objection is
made to what I have said concerning the second day, whether on the
ground that the words mentioned really occur in the passage, although I
say that they do not occur, or because, assuming them to occur, I have
understood them in a sense different from that which the context
evidently requires. As regards the non-occurrence of the words in
question (viz., “God saw that it was good”), let them take
not my evidence, but that of all the Jewish and other translators—Aquila1176
| 1176 The author of a
literal Greek version of the O.T. made in the second century. | namely, Symmachus,1177
| 1177 An ebionitic
translator, free, not literal, in style. | and Theodotion.1178
| 1178 A careful reviser
of the LXX. whose work was welcomed by the Church. His version of
Daniel completely superseded the older one. | But if the words, although occurring in
the account of the other days, do not occur in the account of this,
either let them give a more plausible reason than I have done for their
non-occurrence, or, failing such, let them, whether they like it or
not, accept the suggestion which I have made. Furthermore, if in
Noah’s ark all the animals that enter by twos are unclean, whilst
those of which an uneven number is taken are clean, and if there is no
dispute about the accuracy of the text, let them explain if they can
why it is so written. But if they cannot explain it, then, whether they
will or not, they must embrace my explanation of the matter. Either
produce better fare and ask me to be your guest, or else rest content
with the meal that I offer you, however poor it may be.1179
| 1179 Cf. Hor. Ep. i. 6,
67, 68. |
I must now mention the ecclesiastical writers who have
dealt with this question of the odd number. They are, among the Greeks,
Clement, Hippolytus, Origen, Dionysius, Eusebius, Didymus; and, among
ourselves, Tertullian, Cyprian, Victorinus, Lactantius, Hilary. What
Cyprian said to Fortunatus about the number seven is clear from the
letter which he sent to him.1180
| 1180 Cyprian, Letter to
Fortunatus, xiii. 11. | Or perhaps I
ought to bring forward the reasonings of Pythagoras, Archytas of
Tarentum, and Publius Scipio in (Cicero’s) sixth book
“Concerning the Common Weal.” If my detractors will not
listen to any of these I will make the grammar schools shout in their
ears the words of Virgil:
Uneven numbers are the joy of God.1181
20. To say, as I have done, that virginity is cleaner
than wedlock, that the even numbers must give way to the odd, that the
types of the Old Testament establish the truth of the Gospel: this, it
appears, is a great sin subversive of the churches and intolerable to
the world. The remaining points which are censured in my treatise are,
I take it, of less importance, or else resolve themselves into this. I
have, therefore, refrained from answering them, both that I may not
exceed the limit at my disposal, and that I may not seem to distrust
your intelligence, knowing as I do that you are ready to be my champion
even before I ask you. With my last breath, then, I protest that
neither now nor at any former time have I condemned marriage. I have
merely answered an opponent without any fear that they of my own party
would lay snares for me. I extol virginity to the skies, not because I
myself possess it, but because, not possessing it, I admire it all the
more. Surely it is a modest and ingenuous confession to praise in
others that which you lack yourself. The weight of my body keeps me
fixed to the ground, but do I fail to admire the flying birds or to
praise the dove because, in the words of Virgil,1182
it
Glides on its liquid path with motionless swift
wings?
Let no man deceive himself, let no man, giving ear to the voice of
flattery, rush upon ruin. The first virginity man derives from his
birth, the second from his second birth.1183
| 1183 Tert. de Exh.
Cast. I. | The words are not mine; it is an old
saying, “No man can serve two masters;”1184
that is, the flesh and the spirit. For
“the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the
flesh; and these are contrary the one to the other,” so that we
cannot do the things that we would.1185
When, then,
anything in my little work seems to you harsh, have regard not to my
words, but to the Scripture, whence they are taken.
21. Christ Himself is a virgin;1186
and His mother is also a virgin; yea,
though she is His mother, she is a virgin still. For Jesus has entered
in through the closed doors,1187
and in His
sepulchre—a new one hewn out of the hardest rock—no man is
laid either before Him or after Him.1188
Mary is
“a garden enclosed…a fountain sealed,”1189
and from that fountain flows, according
to Joel,1190
the river which waters the torrent bed
either1191
of cords or of thorns;1192
of cords being those of the sins by which
we were beforetime bound,1193
the thorns those
which choked the seed the goodman of the house had sown.1194
She is the east gate, spoken of by the
prophet Ezekiel,1195
always shut and
always shining, and either concealing or revealing the Holy of Holies;
and through her “the Sun of Righteousness,”1196
our “high priest after the order of
Melchizedek,”1197
goes in and out.
Let my critics explain to me how Jesus can have entered in through
closed doors when He allowed His hands and His side to be handled, and
showed that He had bones and flesh,1198
thus
proving that His was a true body and no mere phantom of one, and I will explain how the
holy Mary can be at once a mother and a virgin. A mother before she was
wedded, she remained a virgin after bearing her son. Therefore, as I
was going to say, the virgin Christ and the virgin Mary have dedicated
in themselves the first fruits of virginity for both sexes.1199
| 1199 Cf. Letter XXII.
§ 18. | The apostles have either been virgins or,
though married, have lived celibate lives. Those persons who are chosen
to be bishops, priests, and deacons are either virgins or widowers; or
at least when once they have received the priesthood, are vowed to
perpetual chastity. Why do we delude ourselves and feel vexed if while
we are continually straining after sexual indulgence, we find the palm
of chastity denied to us? We wish to fare sumptuously, and to enjoy the
embraces of our wives, yet at the same time we desire to reign with
Christ among virgins and widows. Shall there be but one reward, then,
for hunger and for excess, for filth and for finery, for sackcloth and
for silk? Lazarus,1200
in his lifetime,
received evil things, and the rich man, clothed in purple, fat and
sleek, while he lived enjoyed the good things of the flesh but, now
that they are dead, they occupy different positions. Misery has given
place to satisfaction, and satisfaction to misery. And it rests with us
whether we will follow Lazarus or the rich man.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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