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| To a fallen virgin.
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Letter XLVI.2108
| 2108 Placed with
the preceding. |
To a fallen virgin.
1. Now is the time
to quote the words of the prophet and to say, “Oh that my head
were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day
and night for the slain of the daughter of my
people.”2109
Though
they are wrapped in profound silence and lie stunned by their
misfortune, robbed of all sense of feeling by the fatal blow, I at
all events must not let such a fall go unlamented. If, to
Jeremiah, it seemed that those whose bodies had been wounded in war,
were worthy of innumerable lamentations, what shall be said of such
a disaster of souls? “My slain men,” it is said,
“are not slain with the sword, nor dead in
battle.”2110
But I am
bewailing the sting of the real death, the grievousness of sin and
the fiery darts of the wicked one, which have savagely set on fire
souls as well as bodies. Truly God’s laws would groan
aloud on seeing so great a pollution on the earth. They have
pronounced their prohibition of old “Thou shalt not covet thy
neighbour’s wife”;2111
and through
the holy gospels they say that “Whosoever looketh on a woman
to lust after her, hath committed adultery already with her in his
heart.”2112
Now they
see the bride of the Lord herself, whose head is Christ, boldly
committing adultery.2113
| 2113 cf.
Letter ccxvii. § 60. | So too
would groan the companies2114
| 2114 Τάγματα, with
two mss. The alternative reading
is πνεύματα. | of the
Saints. Phinehas, the zealous, because he can now no more take
his spear into his hands and avenge the outrage on the bodies; and
John the Baptist, because he cannot quit the realms above, as in his
life he left the wilderness, to hasten to convict iniquity, and if
he must suffer for the deed, rather lose his head than his freedom
to speak. But, peradventure, like the blessed Abel, he too
though dead yet speaks to us,2115
and now
exclaims, more loudly than John of old concerning Herodias,
“It is not lawful for thee to have her.”2116
For even if the body of John in
obedience to the law of nature has received the sentence of God, and
his tongue is silent, yet “the word of God is not
bound.”2117
John, when
he saw the wedlock of a fellow servant set at nought, was bold to
rebuke even to the death: how would he feel on seeing such an
outrage wreaked on the marriage chamber of the Lord?
2. You have flung away the yoke of that
divine union; you have fled from the undefiled chamber of the true
King; you have shamefully fallen into this disgraceful and impious
corruption; and now that you cannot avoid this painful charge, and have
no means or device to conceal your trouble, you rush into
insolence. The wicked man after falling into a pit of iniquity
always begins to despise, and you are denying your actual covenant with
the true bridegroom; you say that you are not a virgin, and made no
promise, although you have undertaken and publicly professed many
pledges of virginity. Remember the good profession which you
witnessed2118
before God, angels,
and men. Remember the hallowed intercourse, the sacred company of
virgins, the assembly of the Lord, the Church of the holy.
Remember your grandmother, grown old in Christ, still youthful and
vigorous in virtue; and your mother vying with her in the Lord, and
striving to break with ordinary life in strange and unwonted toils;
remember your sister, who copies their doings, nay, endeavours to
surpass them, and goes beyond the good deeds of her fathers in her
virgin graces, and earnestly challenges by word and deed you her
sister, as she thinks, to like efforts, while she earnestly prays that
your virginity be preserved.2119
| 2119 These
words occur in the mss. after
“moderate fare,” below, where they make no sense.
The Ben. Ed. conjectures that they may belong here. | All
these call to mind, and your holy service of God with them, your
life spiritual, though in the flesh; your conversation heavenly,
though on earth. Remember days of calm, nights lighted up,
spiritual songs, sweet music of psalms, saintly prayers, a bed pure
and undefiled, procession of virgins, and moderate fare.2120
What has become of your grave
appearance, your gracious demeanour, your plain dress, meet for a
virgin, the beautiful blush of modesty, the comely and bright pallor
due to temperance and vigils, shining fairer than any brilliance of
complexion? How often have you not prayed, perhaps with
tears, that you
might preserve your virginity without spot! How often have you
not written to the holy men, imploring them to offer up prayers in
your behalf, not that it should be your lot to marry, still less to
be involved in this shameful corruption, but that you should not
fall away from the Lord Jesus? How often have you received
gifts from the Bridegroom? Why enumerate the honours given you
for His sake by them that are His? Why tell of your fellowship
with virgins, your progress with them, your being greeted by them
with praises on account of virginity, eulogies of virgins, letters
written as to a virgin? Now, nevertheless, at a little blast
from the spirit of the air, “that now worketh in the children
of disobedience,”2121
you have abjured
all these; you have changed the honourable treasure, worth fighting
for at all costs, for short-lived indulgence which does for the
moment gratify the appetite; one day you will find it more bitter
than gall.
3. Who would not grieve over such things and
say, “How is the faithful city become an
harlot?”2122
How would
not the Lord Himself say to some of those who are now walking in the
spirit of Jeremiah, “Hast thou seen what the virgin of Israel
has done to me?”2123
I
betrothed her to me in trust, in purity, in righteousness, in
judgment, in pity, and in mercy;2124
as I
promised her through Hosea the prophet. But she loved
strangers, and while I, her husband, was yet alive, she is called
adulteress, and is not afraid to belong to another husband.
What then says the conductor of the bride,2125
the divine and blessed Paul, both that one of old, and the later one
of to-day under whose mediation and instruction you left your
father’s house and were united to the Lord? Might not
either, in sorrow for such a trouble, say, “The thing which I
greatly feared is come upon me, and that which I was afraid of is
come unto me.”2126
“I
have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste
virgin to Christ.”2127
I was
indeed ever afraid “lest by any means as the serpent beguiled
Eve through his subtilty, so your mind should be
corrupted;”2128
wherefore by
countless counter-charms I strove to control the agitation of your
senses, and by countless safeguards to preserve the bride of the
Lord. So I continually set forth the life of the unmarried
maid, and described how “the unmarried” alone
“careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both
in body and spirit.”2129
I used to
describe the high dignity of virginity, and, addressing you as a
temple of God, used as it were to give wings to your zeal as I
strove to lift you to Jesus. Yet through fear of evil I helped
you not to fall by the words “if any man defile the temple of
God, him shall God destroy.”2130
So by my prayers I tried to make
you more secure, if by any means “your body, soul, and spirit
might be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus
Christ.”2131
Yet all my
toil on your behalf has been in vain. Bitter to me has been
the end of those sweet labours. Now I needs must groan again
at that over which I ought to have rejoiced. You have been
deceived by the serpent more bitterly than Eve; and not only your
mind but also your body has been defiled. Even that last
horror has come to pass which I shrink from saying, and yet cannot
leave unsaid, for it is as a burning and blazing fire in my bones,
and I am undone and cannot endure. You have taken the members
of Christ and made them the members of a harlot.2132
This is an evil with which no other
can be matched. This outrage in life is new. “For
pass over the Isles of Chittim and see; and send unto Chedar and
consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing. Hath a
nation changed their gods which are yet no gods.”2133
But the virgin has changed her
glory, and her glory is in her shame. The heavens are
astonished at this, and the earth is horribly afraid, saith the
Lord, for the virgin has committed two evils; she has
forsaken2134
Me, the true and
holy Bridegroom of holy souls, and has betaken herself to an impious
and lawless destroyer of body and soul alike. She has revolted
from God, her Saviour, and yielded her members servants to
uncleanness and to iniquity.2135
She
forgot me and went after her lover2136
from whom she will get no good.
4. It were better for him that a mill-stone
had been hanged about his neck, and that he had been cast into the sea,
than that he should have offended the virgin of the Lord.2137
What slave ever reached such a pitch
of mad audacity as to fling himself upon his master’s bed?
What robber ever attained such a height of folly as to lay hands upon
the very offerings of God, not dead vessels, but bodies living and
enshrining a soul made after the image of God?2138
| 2138 St. Basil has
no idea of the image and likeness of God being a bodily likeness, as
in the lines of Xenophanes. |
Who was ever known to have the hardihood, in the
heart of a city and at high noon, to mark figures of filthy swine upon
a royal statue? He who has set at naught a marriage of man, with
no mercy shewn him, in the presence of two or three witnesses,
dies.2139
Of how
much sorer punishment, suppose you, shall he be thought worthy who
hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and defiled His pledged
bride and done despite unto the spirit of virginity?2140
But the woman, he urges,
consented, and I did no violence to her against her will.
So, that unchaste lady of Egypt raged with love for comely Joseph,
but the chaste youth’s virtue was not overcome by the frenzy
of the wicked woman, and, even when she laid her hand upon him, he
was not forced into iniquity. But still, he urges, this was
no new thing in her case; she was no longer a maid; if I had been
unwilling, she would have been corrupted by some one else.
Yes; and it is written, the Son of Man was ordained to be
betrayed, but woe unto that man by whom He was betrayed.2141
It must needs be that offences
come, but woe to that man by whom they come.2142
5. In such a state of things as this,
“Shall they fall and not arise? Shall he turn away and not
return?”2143
Why did the
virgin turn shamefully away, though she had heard Christ her bridegroom
saying through the mouth of Jeremiah, “And I said, after she had
done all these things (committed all these fornications, LXX.), turn
thou unto me, but she returned not?”2144
“Is there no balm in Gilead; is
there no physician there? Why then is not the health of the
daughter of my people recovered?”2145
You might indeed find many remedies
for evil in Scripture, many medicines to save from destruction and lead
to health; the mysteries of death and resurrection, the sentences of
terrible judgment and everlasting punishment; the doctrines of
repentance and of remission of sins; all the countless illustrations of
conversion, the piece of money, the sheep, the son who wasted his
substance with harlots, who was lost and was found, who was dead and
alive again. Let us not use these remedies for ill; by these
means let us heal our soul. Bethink you of your last day, for you
will surely not, unlike all other women, live for ever. The
distress, the gasping for breath, the hour of death, the imminent
sentence of God, the angels hastening on their way, the soul fearfully
dismayed, and lashed to agony by the consciousness of sin, turning
itself piteously to things of this life and to the inevitable necessity
of that long life to be lived elsewhere. Picture to me, as it
rises in your imagination, the conclusion of all human life, when the
Son of God shall come in His glory with His angels, “For he shall
come and shall not keep silence;”2146
when He shall come to judge the quick and dead, to render to every one
according to his work; when that terrible trumpet with its mighty voice
shall wake those that have slept through the ages, and they that have
done good shall come forth unto the resurrection of life, and they that
have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation.2147
Remember the vision of Daniel, and how
he brings the judgment before us: “I beheld till the
thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of days did sit, whose garment
was white as snow, and the hair of His head like the pure
wool;…and His wheels as burning fire. A fiery stream issued
and came forth before Him; thousand thousands ministered unto Him, and
ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him: the judgment
was set, and the books were opened,”2148
clearly disclosing in the hearing of all, angels and men, things good
and evil, things done openly and in secret, deeds, words, and thoughts
all at once. What then must those men be who have lived wicked
lives? Where then shall that soul hide which in the sight of all
these spectators shall suddenly be revealed in its fulness of
shame? With what kind of body shall it sustain those endless and
unbearable pangs in the place of fire unquenched, and of the worm that
perishes and never dies, and of depth of Hades, dark and horrible;
bitter wailings, loud lamenting, weeping and gnashing of teeth and
anguish without end? From all these woes there is no release
after death; no device, no means of coming forth from the chastisement
of pain.
6. We can escape now. While we can,
let us lift ourselves from the fall: let us never despair of
ourselves, if only we depart from evil. Jesus Christ came into
the world to save sinners. “O come, let us worship and fall
down; let us weep before Him.”2149
The
Word Who invited us to
repentance calls aloud, “Come unto me all ye that labour and are
heavy laden, and I will give you rest.”2150
There is, then, a way of salvation,
if we will. “Death in his might has swallowed up, but
again the Lord hath wiped away tears from off all
faces”2151
of them that
repent. The Lord is faithful in all His words.2152
He does not lie when He says,
“Though your sins be scarlet they shall be as white as
snow. Though they be red like crimson they shall be as
wool.”2153
The great
Physician of souls, Who is the ready liberator, not of you alone,
but of all who are enslaved by sin, is ready to heal your
sickness. From Him come the words, it was His sweet and saving
lips that said, “They that be whole need not a physician but
they that are sick.…I am not come to call the righteous but
sinners to repentance.”2154
What
excuse have you, what excuse has any one, when He speaks thus?
The Lord wishes to cleanse you from the trouble of your sickness and
to show you light after darkness. The good Shepherd, Who left
them that had not wandered away, is seeking after you. If you
give yourself to Him He will not hold back. He, in His love,
will not disdain even to carry you on His own shoulders, rejoicing
that He has found His sheep which was lost. The Father stands
and awaits your return from your wandering. Only come back,
and while you are yet afar off, He will run and fall upon your neck,
and, now that you are cleansed by repentance, will enwrap you in
embraces of love. He will clothe with the chief robe the soul
that has put off the old man with all his works; He will put a ring
on hands that have washed off the blood of death, and will put shoes
on feet that have turned from the evil way to the path of the Gospel
of peace. He will announce the day of joy and gladness to them
that are His own, both angels and men, and will celebrate your
salvation far and wide. For “verily I say unto
you,” says He, “there is joy in heaven before God over
one sinner that repenteth.”2155
If
any of those who think they stand find fault because of your quick
reception, the good Father will Himself make answer for you in the
words, “It was meet that we should make merry and be glad for
this” my daughter “was dead and is alive again, was lost
and is found.”2156
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