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| Chapter VIII.
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Chapter VIII.
Do you flatter yourself
on account of the attribute of virginity? Remember Adam and Eve fell
when they were virgins, and that the perfect purity of their bodies did
not profit them when they sinned. The virgin who sins is to be compared
to Eve, and not to Mary. We do not deny that, in the present life,
there is the remedy of repentance, but we remind you rather to hope for
reward, than to look for pardon. For it is disgraceful that those
should ask for indulgence who are expecting the crown of virginity, and
that those should commit anything unlawful who have even cut themselves
off from things lawful; for it must be remembered that it is lawful to
contract an alliance by marriage. And as those are to be praised who,
from love to Christ, and for the glory of the kingdom of heaven, have
despised the tie of wedlock, so those are to be condemned who, through
the pleasure of incontinence, after they have vowed themselves to God,
have recourse to the Apostolic remedy. Therefore, as we have said,
those who decline marriage despise not things unlawful, but things
lawful. And if that class of people swear, if they speak evil of
others, if they are detractors, or if they patiently listen to
detractors, if they return evil for evil, if they incur the charge of
covetousness with respect to other people’s property, or of
avarice in regard to their own, if they cherish the poison of revenge
or envy, if they either say or think anything unbefitting against the
institutions of the law or the Apostles, if with a desire of pleasing
in the flesh, they exhibit themselves dressed up and adorned, if they
do any other unlawful things, as is only too common, what will it
profit them to have spurned what is lawful, while they practice what is
not lawful? If you wish it to be of advantage to you, that you have
despised things lawful, take care that you do not any of those things
which are not lawful. For, it is foolish to have dreaded that which is
in its nature less, and not to dread that which is intrinsically more
[or not to avoid those things180
| 180 The genuineness of
this clause is very doubtful, and the text is, at best, exceedingly
corrupt. | which are
interdicted,
while
such things as are permitted meet with contempt]. For the Apostle says,
“She that is unmarried careth for the things of the Lord, how she
may please God, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but she
who is married careth for the things of this world, how she may
please181
her husband.” He thus affirms that
the married woman pleases her husband by thinking of worldly things,
while the unmarried woman pleases God, inasmuch as she has no anxiety
about the things of the world. Let him tell me, then, whom she
desires to please, who has no husband, and yet cares for the things of
the world? Shall not the married woman, in such a case, be preferred to
her? Yes, since she by caring for the things of the world pleases at
least her husband, but the other neither pleases her husband, since she
does not have one, nor can she please God.182
| 182 The text is here
very uncertain; we have followed that of Halm, but with hesitation. |
But it is not fitting that we should pass over in silence that which he
said: “The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, how
she may please God, that she may be holy both in body and spirit”
[she careth, he says, for the things of the Lord; she does not care for
the things of the world, or of men, but for the things of God]. What,
then, are the things of the Lord? Let the Apostle tell:
“Whatsoever183
things are holy,
whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever
things are of good report, if there be any virtue, and if there be any
praise of doctrine”: these are the things of the Lord, which holy
and truly apostolic virgins meditate upon, and think of, day and night,
without any interval of time. Of the Lord is the resurrection of the
dead, of the Lord is immortality, of the Lord is incorruption, of the
Lord is that splendor of the sun which is promised to the saints, as it
is written in the Gospel, “Then shall the righteous shine forth
as the sun in the kingdom of their Father”:184
of the Lord are the many mansions of the
righteous in the heavens, of the Lord is the fruit which is produced,
whether thirty fold, or sixty fold, or an hundred fold. Those virgins
who think on these things, and by what works they may be able to merit
them, think of the things of the Lord. Of the Lord, too, is the law of
the new and old testament, in which shine forth the holy utterances of
his lips; and if any virgins meditate without intermission on these
things, they think of the things of the Lord. In that case, there is
fulfilled in them the saying of the prophet: “The
eternal185
foundations are upon a solid rock, and the
commands of God are in the heart of the holy
woman.”E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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