Unless He had first laid the foundations, by what reasoning would He erect the building and set on top the roof that covers all things from above? If we have called marriage the root, virginity the crops; if we have called matrimony the foundation, and perpetual chastity the building or the roof — will any detractor of mine be so envious or so blind as to see in the same house the building and the roof, yet be ignorant of the foundation which bears the building and the roof? Furthermore, in another place, setting forth the apostle's testimony in which he says: "Art thou bound to a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife," we straightway subjoined this: "Each one of us has his own bounds; render me mine, and hold thou thine own. If thou art bound to a wife, give her not a bill of divorce;
if I am loosed from a wife, I will not seek a wife." As I do not loose marriages, if once they are bound, so do you not bind what is loosed. But also in another testimony it is most manifestly declared what we felt concerning virginity and marriage: The apostle does not lay a snare upon us, nor force us to be what we do not wish, but he persuades what is honourable and becoming, and earnestly brings it about that one should serve the Lord and always be solicitous and stand ready to await the Lord's will, so that, when He shall have commanded anything, like a vigorous and armed soldier he may straightway fulfil what is enjoined, and do this without any distraction — which distraction was given, according to Ecclesiastes, to the men of this world, that they might be distracted therein.
At the end too of the comparison of the married and of virgins we concluded our discussion with this saying: Where there is a good and a better, there the reward of the good and of the better is not one; and where the reward is not one, there assuredly the gifts are diverse. There is therefore as great a difference between marriage and virginity as between not sinning and doing well — nay rather, to speak more mildly, as between good and better. Furthermore, in what follows, when we say: The discussion of marriages and of virginity being finished, and the precepts between the one and the other being cautiously moderated, so that one should turn aside neither to the left nor to the right, but should walk by the royal road and fulfil that saying:
"Be not righteous overmuch" — again comparing monogamy with digamy, and, just as he had subordinated marriage to virginity, so he subordinates digamy to marriage — have we not clearly shown what in the holy Scriptures is the left hand, what the right, and what "Be not righteous overmuch" signifies? Namely, that it is the left, if we follow the lust of the Jews and Gentiles and always burn toward intercourse; the right, if we follow the error of the Manichaeans and are entangled in the nets of feigned chastity; but the royal road is so to seek virginity that marriage be not condemned. Moreover, who will be so unjust a judge of my little works as to say that I condemn first marriages, when he shall have read that I spoke of second marriages too?
The apostle concedes second marriages, but to those who are willing, but to those who cannot contain themselves, lest, waxing wanton, they should wish to marry in Christ, having condemnation because they have made void their first faith; and he concedes this because many have gone back after Satan. But they will be more blessed if they so remain. And straightway he subjoins apostolic authority: "according to my counsel." Furthermore, lest the apostle's authority should seem as it were too slight, he added: "but I think that I also have the Spirit of God." Where he calls to continence, there it is the counsel not of a man, but of the Spirit of God.
But where he grants the indulgence of marrying, he does not name the Spirit of God, but weighs the counsel of prudence, so relaxing it to individuals as each is able to bear. Having also set forth the testimonies in which the apostle concedes second marriages, we straightway subjoined: As he concedes marriage to virgins because of the peril of fornication, and makes excusable that which is not sought for its own sake, so the same fornication concedes second marriages to widows. For it is better — albeit a second and a third — to know one husband than many; that is: it is more tolerable to be prostituted to one man than to many. Away with the calumny! We here disputed of a second and third and fourth marriage, if you please, not of the first, lest anyone, in that which we said:
"to be prostituted to one man rather than to many" — refer it to the first husband, when our whole question was about digamy and trigamy. In short, we sealed the discussion of digamy and trigamy with this concluding stroke: "All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient." I do not condemn the twice-married, nay not even the thrice-married, and, if it can be said, the eight-times-married. I will bring in something more: I even receive the fornicator who does penance. Whatever is equally lawful is to be weighed in an equal balance. Let my calumniator blush, saying that I condemn first marriages, when he reads: I do not condemn the twice-married, nay not even the thrice-married, and, if it can be said, the eight-times-married. It is one thing not to condemn, another to proclaim; one thing to grant indulgence, another to praise virtue. But if in this I seem harsh, because I said:
"Whatever is equally lawful is to be weighed in an equal balance" — I think that man will not judge me cruel and rigid, who shall have read that I have prepared other places for virginity and marriage, and other places for the thrice- and eight-times-married and for the penitent (fornicators). That Christ was a virgin in the flesh and a monogamist in the spirit, in that He had one Church, our discourse elsewhere has testified — and yet we are believed to condemn marriage! I am said to condemn marriage, whose discourse is this: "And there is no doubt to any that priests were begotten from the stock of Aaron and Eleazar and Phinehas" — who, since they too had wives, would rightly be objected against us, if with the error of the Encratites we contended that marriages are to be rejected.
Do we, who rebuke Tatian, the chief of the Encratites, who casts marriage aside — do we ourselves condemn wedlock? Again, in the place where I compare virgins and widows, what I have thought concerning marriage, and how I have made three grades — of virginity, of widowhood, of continence, and of the married state — the very words that are written make plain. I do not deny that those widows are blessed who have so remained after baptism, nor do I detract from the merit of those women who, together with their husbands, endure in chastity; but just as these have a greater reward with God than wives who serve the duty of wedlock, so let these same women bear with an even mind that virginity is preferred before them. Bringing forward also, to the Galatians, the testimony of the Apostle:
'By the works of the law no flesh shall be justified' — I brought in a sense of this kind: the works of the law are also marriages; whence too a curse falls upon those women who have no children. If these things are conceded even in the Gospel, it is one thing to grant an indulgence to weakness, another to promise rewards to virtues. Behold, we have plainly said that marriages are conceded in the Gospel, yet that these same, while abiding in their own office, cannot receive the rewards of chastity. But if husbands take this ill, let them be angry not with me, but with the Holy Scriptures — nay rather with the bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and the whole priestly and Levitical choir, who know that they cannot offer sacrifices if they serve the work of wedlock.
But also in that passage where we set down the testimony from the Apocalypse, is it not manifest what we thought concerning virgins, widows, and wives? These are they who sing the new song, which no one can sing except him who is a virgin. These are the firstfruits of God and of the Lamb, and without spot. If virgins are the firstfruits of God, then widows and those continent within marriage will come after the firstfruits — that is, in the second and third grade. In the second and third grade we place widows and married women — and are we said to condemn marriage with heretical fury? There are many things which throughout the whole book we have said, with cautious moderation, about virginity, about widows, about marriages.
But for the sake of brevity I will set down yet one more testimony, which I think no one will gainsay except him who wishes to prove himself either my enemy or a madman. For when I had proposed that the Lord went to the marriage in Cana of Galilee, after certain remarks I added also this: 'He who went once to a marriage, taught once that one may marry.' And this could indeed have told against virginity, if we did not place marriage, after virginity and the chastity of widowhood, in the third grade; but now, since it belongs to heretics to condemn wedlock and to spurn the ordinance of God, whatever they may say in praise of marriage, we gladly hear.
For the Church does not condemn marriage, but subordinates it; nor does she cast it away, but dispenses it, knowing, as we said above, that in a great house there are vessels not only of gold and silver, but also of wood and clay, and that some are unto honour, others unto dishonour, and that whoever shall have cleansed himself will be a vessel honourable and necessary, prepared unto every good work. Whatever, I say, they may say in praise of marriage, we gladly hear. We gladly hear marriage praised — and do we condemn marriage? The Church does not condemn marriages, but subordinates them — like it or not, husbands, she subordinates them — to virginity and widowhood. The Church subordinates marriages, but marriages abiding in their own work; she does not condemn, nor cast away, but dispenses.
It is in your power, if you will, to climb to the second grade of chastity. Why are you indignant, if, standing in the third, you are unwilling to press on to the higher things? Therefore, since I have so often and so repeatedly warned the reader, and through almost every one of the thousand passages of my treatise have walked as a cautious traveller — that I so accept marriage as to prefer to it those who are continent, widows, and virgins — the prudent and kindly reader ought to have judged even those things that seemed harsh in the light of the rest, and not to have accused me, within one and the same book, of putting forth contrary opinions. For who is so dull and so untrained in writing that he would both condemn and praise the same thing, destroy what he has built and build what he has destroyed, and, when he has conquered his adversary, be at last struck through by his own blade?
If unlettered men, ignorant of the art of rhetoric or dialectic, were to disparage me, I would grant pardon to their inexperience and would not reprove their accusation, seeing that I would discern in the fault not ill will but ignorance. But now, since eloquent men, trained in liberal studies, wish rather to wound than to understand, let them have this brief answer from me: they ought to correct my faults, not merely reprove them. The field lies open, the battle-line stands opposite, the adversary's doctrine is manifest, and — to bring in something Vergilian — 'Behold him yonder, who calls thee': let them answer otherwise, let them keep measure in disputing, and teach me what in his books I have either passed over or added. I do not listen to fault-finders; I follow masters.
It is a dainty kind of learning to dictate blows from the wall to the one fighting, and, while you yourself are anointed with perfumes, to accuse the blood-stained soldier of cowardice. Yet in saying this I am not straightway guilty of boasting, as though I alone had fought while the rest slept; but I say this: that those can fight more cautiously who have seen me wounded. I do not want such a contest, in which you merely shelter yourself, and with your right hand slack carry your shield round upon your left. Either you must strike or you must fall. I cannot reckon you the victor unless I have seen the adversary slain.
We have read, O most learned men, in the schools, and have likewise learned those maxims of Aristotle, or such as flow from the founts of Gorgias — namely, that there are several kinds of speaking, and that among the rest it is one thing to write gymnastically, another dogmatically: in the former the disputation is roving and, responding to the adversary, proposes now this, now that, argues as it pleases, says one thing and does another, shows (as the saying goes) bread while holding a stone; but in the latter an open brow is required, and, so to speak, an ingenuous frankness. It is one thing to inquire, another to define: in the one we must fight, in the other we must teach. May you, a zealous master, teach me as I stand in the battle and am in peril of my life. Do not, from the flank and from where I did not expect it, inflict a wound:
strike with the sword straight on. It is shameful for you that the enemy should perish by tricks, not by strength — as though this too were not the highest art of combatants, to threaten in one place and to strike in another. Read, I beseech you, Demosthenes; read Tully; and, lest perchance the rhetoricians displease you, whose art it is to speak the plausible rather than the true, read Plato, Theophrastus, Xenophon, Aristotle, and the rest, who, flowing from the fount of Socrates, ran off into divided streams: what in them is open, what is simple? What words are not of the deeper sense? What sense is not aimed at victory? Origen, Methodius, Eusebius, Apollinaris write against Celsus and Porphyry with many thousands of verses:
consider by what arguments, and how slippery, they overturn the problems woven by the devil's spirit; and because at times they are compelled to say, not what they think, but what necessity requires, they are called heathens. I say nothing of the Latin writers — Tertullian, Cyprian, Minucius, Victorinus, Lactantius, Hilary — lest I seem not so much to have defended myself as to accuse others. I will bring forward the Apostle Paul, whom, as often as I read him, I seem to myself to hear not words but thunders. Read his epistles, and above all those to the Romans, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians, in which he is set wholly in the contest, and you will see, in the testimonies which he takes from the Old Testament, how skilful, how prudent, how much a dissembler he is of what he is doing.
His words seem indeed simple, and as it were those of an innocent and rustic man, one who knows neither how to lay nor how to avoid an ambush. But wherever you look, they are thunderbolts. He clings to his cause, he seizes everything he touches; he turns his back, that he may overcome; he feigns flight, that he may slay. Let us then slander him and say: 'The testimonies which you used against the Jews or the other heresies sound one way in their own places, another in your epistles. We see the examples taken captive: they served you unto victory, which in their own volumes do not fight.' Does he not speak with us together with the Saviour: 'We speak one way abroad, another way at home'? The crowd hears parables, the disciples hear the truth. To the Pharisees the Lord propounds questions and does not expound.
It is one thing to teach a disciple, another to overcome an adversary. 'My secret to myself,' he says, 'my secret to myself and to mine.' You are indignant with me because I did not teach Jovinian, but conquered him. Nay rather, those are indignant who grieve that he was anathematized, and who, while they praise what they are, accuse what they pretend to be. As though indeed he had to be entreated to yield to me, and not, unwilling and resisting, to be led into the chains of truth. And I would say these things if, out of eagerness for victory, I had spoken anything against the rule of the Scriptures and, as brave men are wont to do in controversies, had redeemed a fault with a prize.
But as it is, since I have been rather an interpreter of the Apostle than a dogmatist, and have used the office of a commentator, whatever seems harsh should be imputed rather to him whom we expounded than to us who expounded. Unless perchance he said one thing and we, by a malicious interpretation, have wrested the simplicity of his words. Let whoever charges this prove it from the very writings. We said: 'If it is good not to touch a woman, then it is bad to touch; for nothing is contrary to good except evil. But if it is bad, and is pardoned, it is therefore conceded, lest something worse than the evil should come about' — and so on down to the proposition of the next chapter. This we appended for the reason that the Apostle had said: 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman.'
'But because of fornication, let each man have his own wife, and each woman have her own husband.' In what do my words differ from the Apostle's meaning? Unless perchance in this: that he pronounces, while I doubt; he defines, I inquire; he says openly, 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman,' I ask timidly, 'if it is good not to touch a woman.' The 'if' belongs to one who doubts, not to one who affirms. He says, 'It is good not to touch,' I add what may be contrary to the good. And immediately in what follows: 'the Apostle's prudence is to be noted. He did not say, It is good not to have a wife, but, It is good not to touch a woman' — as though even in the touch there were peril, as though he who has touched her might not escape.
You see, therefore, that we are not expounding concerning wives, but disputing simply concerning intercourse, that, in comparison with chastity and virginity and angelic likeness, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. 'Vanity of vanities, all is vanity,' said Ecclesiastes. If all creatures are good, as founded by a good Creator, how is the whole 'vanity'? If the earth is vanity, are then also the heavens and the angels and the thrones, dominations, powers, and the other virtues? But things that are good in themselves, as founded by a good Creator, are called vanity in comparison with greater things. For example: a lamp is as nothing in comparison with a torch; a torch does not shine in comparison with a star; compare a star with the moon, and it is blind; join the moon to the sun, and it does not glow red;
compare the sun with Christ, and it is darkness. 'I am,' He says, 'who am.' If therefore you compare every creature with God, it does not subsist. 'Do not deliver,' says Esther, 'your inheritance to those who are not' — namely to idols or to demons. And surely there were idols and demons, to whom she prayed that they might not be delivered. In Job too we read it said by Bildad concerning the impious man: 'Let his confidence be torn from his tent, and let destruction tread upon him as a king. Let there dwell in his tent the companions of him who is not' — doubtless of the devil, who, though he has companions, would not have them unless he existed; yet, because he has perished unto God, he is said not to be.
Therefore, according to this sense of comparison, we said that it is bad to touch a woman — although no mention was made of a wife — because it is good not to touch. And we appended, calling virginity wheat, marriage barley, fornication cattle-dung: assuredly both wheat and barley are creatures of God. Yet in the Gospel the greater crowd is fed with barley loaves, the smaller with those of wheat: 'men,' it says, 'and beasts thou wilt save, O Lord.' We said the same thing in other words, when we called virginity gold, marriage silver; and the hundred and forty-four thousand virgins sealed, who 'were not defiled with women.'
By which we wished to show that all who have not remained virgins are, in comparison with the most pure and angelic chastity and with our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, defiled. But if to anyone it seems harsh and worthy of reproof that we have made so great a distance between virginity and marriage as there is between wheat and barley, let him read the book of holy Ambrose 'On Widows,' and he will find that he, among the other things which he discussed about virginity and marriage, said also these words:
'The Apostle did not so prefer marriage as to extinguish the zeal for integrity, but, beginning from the persuasion of continence, he descended to the remedies for incontinence; and, when he had shown the prize of the heavenly calling to the strong, he yet suffered no one to faint by the way, thus applauding the first without despising also those who follow. For he too had learned that the Lord Jesus showed to some barley bread, lest they should faint by the way, to others His own body, that they might strive toward the kingdom.' And in what follows: 'The nuptial bond, then, is not to be shunned as though a fault, but to be declined as though a burden of necessity. For the law bound the wife to bring forth children in labour and sorrow, and that her turning should be toward her husband, so that he should rule over her.'
'Therefore the married woman, not the widow, is doomed to labours and pains in the bearing of children; and only the wedded, not the virgin, is subjected to the dominion of a husband.' And in another place: 'You were bought,' he says, 'with a price; do not become the servants of men.' See how evident is the definition of conjugal servitude. And a little after: 'If then a good marriage is servitude, what is a bad one — when they cannot sanctify one another, but destroy?' All that we have poured out in a wide discourse concerning virginity and marriage, he has compressed into a brief compendium, comprehending many things in few. By him virginity is proclaimed the persuasion of continence, marriage the remedy for incontinence. And significantly there is a descent from greater things to lesser:
'to virgins he shows the prize of the heavenly calling; the married, lest they faint by the way, he consoles; some he praises, others he does not despise; marriages he compares to barley, virginity to the body of Christ.' And I think there is much less distance between wheat and barley than between barley and the body of Christ. Then he calls marriage both a burden of necessity to be declined and the definition of a most evident servitude, and many other things which he pursued most fully in his three little books 'On Virgins.' From all which it is plain that I have said nothing new about virgins and married women, but have in all things followed the opinion of my elders — namely of this man as well as of the rest who have discussed ecclesiastical doctrines;
whose negligence I would rather emulate than the obscure diligence of others. Husbands swell up against me, because I said: 'I beseech you, what is that good thing which forbids prayer, which does not permit the receiving of the body of Christ? When I fulfil the office of a husband, I do not fulfil that of a continent man.' The same Apostle commands in another place that we should always pray. If we must always pray, then never must we serve marriage, since, as often as I render the debt to my wife, I cannot pray. Why I said this is plain, because I was interpreting that saying of the Apostle: 'Do not defraud one another, except perhaps by consent for a time, that you may be free for prayer.' The Apostle Paul says that when we lie with our wives we cannot pray;
Peter exhorts to continence, lest our prayers be hindered. In this, I ask, what is my sin? What have I merited? What have I transgressed? If troubled and murky waters flow, it is not the fault of the channel, but of the spring. Or am I therefore accused, because I dared to add of my own: 'What is that good thing which does not permit the receiving of the body of Christ?' To this I will briefly answer: which is greater, to pray or to receive the body of Christ? Assuredly the body of Christ. If by intercourse that which is less is hindered, much more that which is greater.
We said in the same volume that David and his companions could not eat the loaves of proposition from the law, unless they had answered that for three days they were clean from women — not indeed from harlots, which was condemned in the law, but from their wives, to whom they were lawfully joined. The people too, when they were about to receive the law on Mount Sinai, were commanded to abstain from their wives for three days. I know that at Rome this is the custom, that the faithful always receive the body of Christ — which I neither reprove nor approve, 'for each one abounds in his own sense' — but I appeal to the conscience of those very persons who, on the same day after intercourse, communicate and, according to Persius, 'purge the night in the river,' as to why they dare not go to the martyrs, why they do not enter the churches.
Is Christ one thing in public and another at home? What is not allowed in the church is not allowed at home either. Nothing is closed to God, and even the darkness shines before Him. Let each one prove himself, and so let him approach the body of Christ — not that one day or two of deferred communion makes a Christian holier, so that what I did not merit today I might merit tomorrow or the day after, but that, while I grieve at not having communicated in the body of Christ, I abstain for a little while from my wife's embrace, that I may prefer to the love of my spouse the love of Christ. 'It is hard, not to be borne; who of worldly men can endure this?' He who can endure, let him endure; he who cannot, let him look to himself.
Our care is to say, not what each one can or wishes, but what the Scriptures enjoin. That too is carped at in my commentaries on the same Apostle, in which I said: 'But lest anyone should think, from that which follows — that you may be free for prayer, and again come together for the same purpose — that the Apostle wills this and does not concede it because of a greater ruin, he immediately infers: lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence. A fine indulgence, forsooth: and again for the same purpose! That which he blushes to call by its own name, which he sets before the temptation of Satan, which has incontinence for its cause — do we labour to expound as though obscure, when he has expounded himself, who wrote:
'But this,' he says, 'I say by way of indulgence, not by way of command'? And do we still mutter that marriage is not to be called an indulgence but a precept — as though second and third marriages were not conceded in the same manner? — and the rest. What have I said here that the Apostle did not say? That, forsooth: 'which he blushes to call by its own name'? I judge that, when he says 'for the same purpose' and is silent about the thing itself, he does not name intercourse openly, but modestly points to it. Or is it because there follows: 'which he sets before the temptation of Satan, which has incontinence for its cause'? Is this not, in another order of words, the very same: 'lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence'? Or is it because I said: 'and we still mutter that marriage is not to be called an indulgence but a precept'?
But if this is hard, let it be imputed to the Apostle, who says: 'But this I say by way of indulgence, not by way of command,' and not to me — I who, except for the transposed order, have changed neither the sense nor the words. Let us pass on to the rest — for the discourse hastens on with epistolary brevity: 'I say,' says the Apostle, 'to the unmarried and to widows: it is good for them if they so remain, even as I. But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn.' Which chapter we thus interpreted: after he had conceded to the married the use of wedlock and had shown what he willed and what he conceded, he passes to the unmarried and widows, and sets before them his own example, and calls them happy 'if they so remain; but if they do not contain themselves, let them marry.' The same thing as above: