Letters & Polemics (CSEL) 29 part 4/4

For men lie together unlawfully and basely even with a lawful wife, where the conception of offspring is avoided. This is what Onan, son of Judah, did, and God slew him on account of it. The propagation of children, therefore, is itself the first, natural, and lawful cause of marriage. And through this, those who are joined on account of incontinence ought not so to temper their own evil as to exterminate the good of marriage, that is, the propagation of children. For it was of the incontinent that the Apostle was speaking, where he says: 'I will therefore that the younger marry, bear children, be mothers of families, give no occasion to the adversary for the sake of reviling. For already some are turned aside after Satan.' So when he said:

'I will that the younger marry,' this he assuredly counseled in order to shore up the ruin of continence. But lest perchance only the infirmity of carnal concupiscence should be thought of by them, which alone was to be served by the office of wedlock, while the good of marriage should be either despised or neglected, he immediately added: 'bear children, be mothers of families.' But those who choose to contain themselves assuredly choose something better than the good of marriage is, which is the begetting of children. Hence, if continence is chosen in order that something better than the good of marriage may be attained, how much more is it to be kept in order that adultery may be avoided! For when the Apostle had said:

'But if he cannot contain himself, let him marry,' he said, 'for it is better to marry than to burn'; he did not say, 'It is better to commit adultery than to burn.' There is nothing, therefore, to which we may exhort those who fear to be reconciled to adulterous spouses now healed by repentance, except to the keeping of continence, since a woman, as long as her husband — whether adulterous or chaste — lives, being bound, commits adultery if she marries another; and a man, as long as his wife — whether adulterous or chaste — lives, being bound, commits adultery if he takes another. For this binding, since it is not dissolved even if a spouse be separated from a chaste spouse by divorce, is far less dissolved if, without being separated, she commits adultery.

And through this, nothing dissolves it except the death of a spouse — not one falling into adultery, but one going out from the body. Wherefore, if a woman withdraws from an adulterous husband and is unwilling to be reconciled to him, let her remain unmarried; and if a man dismisses an adulterous woman and is unwilling to take her back even after penance, let him keep continence — if not by the will of choosing the better good, at least by the necessity of avoiding the pernicious evil. To this I would exhort him even if his wife were in an incurable and long-lasting sickness; even if she were somewhere separated in body, so that the husband could not approach her; finally, to this I would exhort him even if a woman, wishing to live continently — though against discipline, because not by consent — should nevertheless, herself chaste, dismiss a chaste husband.

For I think no Christian will refuse to admit that he is an adulterer who, while his wife is either long sick, or long absent, or desiring to live continently, has united himself to another woman. So, then, even the man who has dismissed an adulteress is an adulterer with another woman, since it is not this man or that, but 'everyone who dismisses his wife and takes another commits adultery.' Wherefore, if the life of the saints — free from the conjugal bond — is less sought after, let the punishment of adulterers be shuddered at, and let concupiscence be curbed at least by fear, if continence is not chosen out of love. For if, where there is fear, labor be exerted, where there was labor, there will also be love. For we must not trust in our own strength; but prayer must be joined to our efforts, so that He may fill with good things who deters from evil ones.

Let us also reply to that point where you think husbands are compelled to punish adulteresses without any mercy, when they wish them to die because, while these live, they are not permitted to take others. Wishing to exaggerate this cruelty, you said: 'It does not seem to me, most beloved father, that here there is a divine sense, where kindness and piety are excluded.' You say this as though husbands ought therefore to spare adulterous wives because it is permitted them to take others — so that, if it is not permitted, they should not spare, in order that it might be permitted. Nay rather, they ought for this reason to show mercy to the sinful women, that they too may obtain mercy for their own sins. And much more must this be done by those who, having dismissed adulterous wives, desire to live continently.

For they ought to be so much the more merciful, the more they wish to be holier, so that they may be divinely aided in keeping chastity in themselves, while they do not themselves avenge, in human fashion, the chastity violated by their wives. And most of all that word of the Lord is to be recalled to their memory: 'He that is without sin, let him first cast a stone at her' — not 'he that is without that very sin,' since we are speaking of chaste men, but 'he that is without sin'; for if they shall say that they are, they seduce themselves, and the truth is not in them. Furthermore, if they do not seduce themselves and the truth is in them, there will not be in them a bloody severity. For, knowing that they are not without sin, they forgive, that it may be forgiven them; nor is kindness and piety excluded by them.

For these things are rather excluded, if it be licentiousness of lust, not care of piety, that obtains from them pardon for the sins of their spouses — that is, if they spare for this reason, that it is permitted them to take others, and not rather for this reason, that they wish the Lord to spare them too. How much better, then, more honorable, and finally more worthy of the Christian profession, that they spare the blood of their adulterous wives — this is what we tell them is written: 'Forgive the injustice of your neighbor, and then, when you pray, your sins shall be loosed. Does a man keep anger against another man, and seek healing from the Lord? Upon a man like himself he has no mercy, and does he entreat concerning his own sins? While he himself is flesh, he keeps wrath: who shall be propitious to his sins?' And from the Gospel:

'Forgive, and it shall be forgiven you' — so that we may be able to say, 'Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors' — and from the Apostle: 'Rendering to no man evil for evil'; and whatever things of this kind there are in the holy Scriptures, by which the human mind, when it is stirred up to take vengeance, because it is Christian, is softened. How much better, I say, do we say these things, than that we should say: 'Only dismiss those adulteresses, and do not seek their blood; whatever grief you have from their scandalous deeds, others whom you shall marry will console you; for you would rightly wish to remove these from the number of the living, if their life were an impediment to your marrying others.'

'But now, since even while these live it is permitted you to provide other marriages for yourselves, why do you so greatly wish to kill them?' If we say these things, do you not observe how far our persuasion is from the Christian character? — we who both say falsely that what is not permitted them is permitted, that is, while these live, to be joined to others; and, if they have spared them on that account, they spare not for the sake of piety, but for the sake of the free power of other marriages. Finally, I ask of you whether it is permitted to a Christian husband, either according to the ancient law of God or by the Roman laws, to kill an adulteress. If it is permitted, it is better that he refrain from both — that is, both from the lawful punishment while she sins, and from the unlawful marriage while she lives.

But if he persists in choosing one of the two, it is better for him to do what is lawful, namely that the adulteress be punished, than what is not lawful, namely that he commit adultery while she lives. But if — as is more truly said — it is not lawful for a Christian man to kill an adulterous spouse, but only to dismiss her, who is so mad as to say to him, 'Do what is not lawful, so that what is not lawful may be lawful for you'? For since both are unlawful according to the law of Christ — whether to kill an adulteress or, while she lives, to take another — he must abstain from both, and the unlawful is not to be done in place of the unlawful. For if he is going to do what is not lawful, let him now commit adultery and not commit homicide, so that he take another while his wife lives and not shed human blood.

But if both are wicked, he ought not to perpetrate one in place of the other, but to avoid both. Here I see what can be said by the incontinent: namely, that he who dismisses an adulteress and permits her to live, if he takes another, as long as that former one lives, is a perpetual adulterer, and does not perform fruitful penance, since he does not withdraw from the disgraceful deed; nor, if he is a catechumen, is he admitted to baptism, since he is not changed from that which impedes; nor can a penitent be reconciled while persevering in the same wickedness. But if by accusing the adulteress he shall have killed her, this sin, since it is past and done and one does not remain in it, is — if done by a catechumen — washed away by baptism, and — if by a baptized person — healed by penance and reconciliation.

But shall we therefore say that adultery is not adultery — which is committed beyond doubt, if another is taken while an adulterous spouse lives? Yet, this kind of adultery being excepted, surely you do not doubt that it is adultery, if anyone should take the living wife of another man, dismissed by her husband through a bill of divorce without any fornication of the woman. What then?

When he sees that he is neither admitted to baptism, if he is a catechumen, nor performs profitable penance, if being baptized he did this, so long as he does not correct and forsake what he did — if he should be willing and able to kill the man whose wife he took, so that this crime might either be washed away by baptism or loosed by penance, and thus that adultery too might not remain, the woman being made free from the law of her husband after her husband's death, but that satisfaction be made through penance for the past deed, or it be blotted out by regeneration — shall the law of Christ therefore be accused, as though it compelled homicide to be committed, when it says that to take a woman repudiated without the crime of fornication is adultery?

For here, if we attend even to a little of what may be said, far graver things can be urged than you yourself said. For while you do not wish there to be adulteries, if others are taken when adulteresses have been dismissed, you found this: 'Since, if we shall call these adulteries, husbands will be compelled to kill adulteresses, by whose life they are impeded from taking others.' And, in order to exaggerate this, you said: 'It does not seem to me, most beloved father, that here there is a divine sense, where kindness and piety are excluded.' If, then, anyone unwilling to believe it to be adultery

— when a woman repudiated by her husband without the crime of fornication is taken by another — and should find this against you, that by this reasoning men are persuaded to perpetrate homicides, and to attack the husbands of those women whom they have taken thus repudiated, either by such ambushes as they can, or by calumnies, or to accuse them of some true crimes and kill them, so that, these being dead, there may be marriages for those who while the husbands lived were adulteries — will he not, exaggerating this, say to you: 'It does not seem to me, most beloved father, that here there is a divine sense, where not only kindness and piety are excluded, but even a huge malignity and impiety is stirred up?' Since it is far lighter and more tolerable that husbands kill adulteresses than that adulterers kill husbands.

Does it please you that, on account of this most empty grudge, we should abandon the defense of the Lord's sentence, or moreover accuse it, saying that adultery ought not to be judged, even if a woman repudiated by her husband apart from the cause of fornication be joined to another, lest her husband, by whom she was dismissed, be compelled to kill him — while she desires to convert the adultery into wedlock by the death of her former husband? I know this does not please you, that on account of this most empty grudge the law of Christ, though it be found true and sound, should be called harsh and inhuman.

And so it ought likewise not to seem to you that adultery must therefore be denied, when another is taken while an adulterous wife lives, on the ground that a husband can through this be compelled to kill an adulteress, while he desires that it be permitted him, once she is extinguished, to take another — if while she lives it is not permitted to do so. What then?

For if the disparagers of the Christian faith should also say this, that men are driven to kill their wives by criminal plots against them—wives whom they cannot bear because they are burdensome, whether afflicted by long-lasting sickness and unable to endure intercourse, or poor, or barren, or misshapen—in the hope of marrying other women who are healthy, wealthy, fertile, and most beautiful, because it is not permitted to dismiss those whom they refuse to endure (except for the cause of fornication) and to marry others, lest, bound forever in adultery, they should be able neither to be baptized nor to be healed by penance—are we, on that account, going to say (in order that these crimes of murder may not be perpetrated) that it is not adultery to join other women to oneself when one's wives have been repudiated apart from the cause of fornication?

But now, from this notion of yours that it is not adultery if a man has cast off his wife for the cause of fornication and has married another, do you not think one must beware, lest men learn to compel their wives—whom for countless other reasons they cannot bear—to commit adultery, so that, the marriage bond being loosed by fornication (as you suppose), it may be permitted them to marry others; and from the very fact that they have forced those women into adultery, they may either be washed by baptism or healed by penance, since to those men both grace and healing will be denied so long as they live with adulteresses, if, having repudiated their former wives apart from the cause of fornication, they have married others? Unless perhaps someone should say that no man can make his wife commit adultery, if she is chaste.

And yet the Lord says: 'Everyone who dismisses his wife, apart from the cause of fornication, makes her commit adultery.' This is surely for this reason: because, though she was chaste with her husband, nevertheless, once dismissed, she is driven by incontinence to be joined to another while the former husband still lives—and this is to commit adultery. But if she does not do this, still that man, so far as in him lies, has compelled her to do it; and God will impute this to him as sin, even if she remains chaste. Yet who does not know how very rare are those women who live so chastely with their husbands that, even if they are dismissed by them, they do not seek others? For the number of women is incomparably greater who, although they cleave chastely to their husbands, nevertheless, if they have been dismissed by their husbands, do not delay to marry.

When, therefore, men have believed the Lord who says, 'Everyone who dismisses his wife apart from the cause of fornication makes her commit adultery,' if they also believe you when you say that when a woman commits fornication her husband is allowed to marry another—then whoever wishes, on account of any other troubles whatever, to be rid of the wife to whom he is joined, will first make her commit adultery by dismissing her without fornication, so that he may then marry another once she has become an adulteress by marrying; and thus, freed from the former sin by which he made her commit adultery, whether through baptism or through penance, he may seem to himself to hold this second woman without his own adultery, since after the former woman's adultery he married another as if the marriage bond had thereby been loosed.

But indeed, if he has contrived this, he will both make his wife an adulteress, and he himself, though marrying another after his spouse's adultery, will be an adulterer; and it will profit him nothing that he believed you rather than Him who, making no exception, says: 'Everyone who forsakes his wife and marries another commits adultery.' When all these things have been considered and discussed, it remains that by those who hear this faithfully it be said to us what was said to the Lord: 'If such is the case with a wife, it is not expedient to marry.' To whom what shall we too reply, except what He Himself replied? 'Not all grasp this word, but those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who were so born from their mother's womb; and there are eunuchs who were made such by men;'

'and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let him who can grasp it, grasp it.' Therefore let him who can grasp it grasp what not all grasp. But those can grasp it to whom the mercy of God—hidden, yet not unjust—grants this. But among all these who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, some are those who in both sexes know nothing of intercourse; others are those who have experienced it and turned away from it, partly indeed having experienced it unlawfully, partly lawfully. Further, among those who have experienced it lawfully, some are those who have done so only lawfully, others both lawfully and unlawfully. For there are among them those who know their own marriages alone; but there are others who know also other women and debaucheries of every kind.

But those who, after intercourse with their spouses, make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven—whether they lose their spouses by death, or by consent profess continence with them, or by the necessity of divorces (lest, joining themselves to others while their spouses live, they commit adulteries)—these make themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, not in order that they may be more glorious there, but because they cannot be there otherwise. For those who restrain themselves not out of this necessity but out of a desire for a better good could be there even while conjugal chastity is preserved—albeit among lesser rewards, yet still within; but those who restrain themselves for this reason, that they fear to be joined to others while their former spouses live, ought to bear a greater care for their salvation

than those bore who out of a fuller love chose continence as a gift. For then indeed they will be there, if they will not be adulterers; but if they do not remain continent, they will be adulterers, because, while their former spouses live, they will cleave not to other spouses but to adulterers. And if they are absent from the kingdom of heaven, where will they be, except where they will not be saved? These, therefore, I address, that what they ought to do if they had spouses withering with long-lasting sickness, or absent in a place inaccessible to them, or restraining themselves out of unlawful hostility—this they should do if they have had spouses defiled with adulterous pollution and are for this reason separating from their fellowship: let them not seek other marriages, because they will not be marriages but adulteries.

For since there is an equal form in this bond of husband and wife, just as a wife, while her husband lives, will be called an adulteress if she is with another man, so also a husband, while his wife lives, will be called an adulterer if he is with another woman. For although he who acts apart from the cause of fornication acts more gravely, yet everyone who dismisses his wife and marries another commits adultery. Let not the burden of continence terrify them; it will be light, if it is Christ's; it will be Christ's, if faith is present, which obtains from the One who commands what He has commanded.

Let it not break them that their continence seems to be of necessity, not of will; because even those who chose it by will have made it to be of necessity, since now they cannot deviate from it without condemnation; and those who have been thrust into it by necessity make it to be of will, if they trust not in themselves but in Him from whom every good comes. The former ascended to it for the sake of greater glory, that they might find something more; the latter fled to it out of care for their final salvation, lest they perish;

let both persevere, let both walk in that which they have attained even to the end, let them be fervent in their zeals, let them supplicate with vows; because for the former too salvation must be pondered, that they may fear to fall from what their will has seized upon, and for the latter glory must not be despaired of, if they love to persist in that which necessity has brought upon them. For it can come to pass that, by God terrifying and exhorting, converting and fulfilling, human affection may be changed for the better, so that they vow to live most perseveringly without marriages and without any intercourse or unclean handling of lust, so that even if the separated spouses, by dying, should open a place for marrying others, that place may be closed off by their vow which lies open by what is lawful, and what was begun out of necessity may be made perfect through charity.

To such persons assuredly the same reward will be given that is given to those who by equal consent with their spouses have vowed this, or who, bound by no marriages, have chosen continence for the sake of a greater good. But if they restrain themselves in such a way that, should those women die by whose life they are hindered from marrying, they intend to marry others—then assuredly, even if they themselves first depart from the body in such continence, it is not imputed to them except unto conjugal chastity, on account of which they refrain from doing what they would do if it were permitted. For to live continently with this intention is too little for receiving the rewards of that continence which is more freely chosen, but it suffices for guarding against adulteries. And you will remember that I am saying this concerning both sexes.

But this I say chiefly on account of men, who for this reason consider themselves superior to women, that they may not deign to be their equals in chastity—in which they ought rather to have led the way, so that the women might follow them as their own heads. But when the law forbids adulteries, if under the pretext of incontinence of carnal weakness an excuse be admitted, an occasion of perishing is opened to many under the name of a false impunity. For neither do women lack flesh, to whom their husbands do not wish any such thing to be permitted, as though it were permitted to themselves because they are men. But far be it that anything be owed to the better sex as though to its honor which is subtracted from its modesty, since just honor is owed to virtue, not to vice.

Nay rather, since from women—who assuredly have flesh—they demand such great chastity, that, when they are away from their wives for very long as travelers, they wish them to pass the fervor of youth uncontaminated by any adulterous embrace—and very many do pass it most chastely, especially the Syrian women, whose husbands, occupied with the profits of trading, forsake them as young girls and scarcely at some time return as old men to little old women—by this very fact they are the more evidently convicted that what they plead they cannot do is not impossible. For if the weakness of human beings could not do this, much less could the weaker sex of women do it.

Whence, when we terrify those men who think that manly excellence consists in nothing but the license to sin—lest by cleaving to adulterous marriages they perish eternally—we are accustomed to set before them also the continence of clerics, who for the most part are seized against their will to undertake the same burden, and, having undertaken it, carry it through to its due end with the Lord's help. We therefore say to them: What then? If you too were seized by the violence of the peoples to undertake this, would you not chastely guard the office once undertaken, suddenly turned to obtaining strength from the Lord, of which you had never before thought? 'But honor,' they say, 'consoles those men greatly.' We reply: And let fear govern you far more.

For if so many ministers of God have suddenly and unexpectedly undertaken what was imposed upon them, hoping to shine more illustriously in Christ's inheritance, how much more ought you to live continently by avoiding adulteries, fearing not to shine less in the kingdom of God, but to burn in the fire of Gehenna! These things and things of this kind we say to them, as best we can—to those who, when their wives have in any way departed from them or been dismissed for adultery, wish to marry others, and, when they are forbidden, set before us the weakness of the flesh. But now this book too must be closed, and God must be asked either not to permit them to be tempted by separations of spouses, or to permit it in such a way that the fear of endangered salvation may become for them an occasion of fuller or more approved chastity.