This they add to heap up the pile of their perdition, that they defame the good, whose example they use for evil; for whom it would be useful enough and wholesome, if they would rather believe that they themselves had not understood the meaning of any given history, than judge anything dishonorable to be in the law. These men the apostle Paul confounds and rebukes, saying: 'understanding neither the things they say, nor the things whereof they affirm.' And again: 'If any man think that he knows anything, he has not yet known as he ought to know.' Idle, therefore, are the prejudgments of the insolent, whom the wandering devices of their own perversity lead astray, and who seek out histories agreeable to their own notions to expound—men who, doing evil, borrow legal patronage.
But to those who do well, all things whatsoever are written are good, who receive well the things well spoken, as the apostle Paul promises: 'We know,' he says, 'that the law is good, if a man use it lawfully.' We have prevailed in confounding the gainsayers. We turn forthwith to instruct further the very ones whom we have overcome, lest we either suffer the saints to remain under accusation, or be reckoned ignorant in rendering an account—that, being publicly overcome, they may do penance; or, if they will not, we have discharged what pertains to our diligence, that, as we have satisfied the aforesaid sentence of Solomon, so we may satisfy also the apostle Paul as he proclaims:
'The servant of the Lord,' he says, 'must not wrangle, but be gentle toward all, apt to teach, patient, with all meekness reproving those who resist, lest perhaps God give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth, and they recover themselves out of the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his will.' Whatsoever was done by our authors was done with reason, that to us their posterity an authority fortified on every side might be handed down against the transgressors. On account of forestalling the heresy which we have censured above, concerning the taking up of women—whether by Himself or through His servants—the Lord relaxed a little, lest by excessive strictness the whole fabric of the Lord be condemned.
There were foreseen by the Lord the heretics who take away marriages, and who strive to separate those whom the Lord has joined, against the principle of nature and against the Gospel. Against these an authority was even then being prepared to forbid them, lest married women be forbidden to draw near to Christ, whom in His presence they served. But even that permission itself was procured not without restraint—working not for its own sake, but doing for others' sake what it did. For if the Lord addressed the Samaritan woman, He taught for an hour and withdrew, and made no defense for the prolonging of excesses. For an hour, too, He suffered Martha to serve. But what else was it to the Lord than to serve the banquets of the heavenly kingdom? Were there not, under the Lord, feasts?
Or under His majesty was there any other drink or food than the discipline alone that fed them?—the Lord Himself bearing witness and saying: 'My food is to do the will of Him that sent me.' Thus a company of women accompanied the apostles, not that they might perish, but that they might learn reverence; and they followed for the sake of rendering the ministry of kindness, as in the Gospel it is recorded of the Lord and of them alike:
'And it came to pass,' he says, 'afterward, that He too journeyed through the cities and villages, preaching and evangelizing the kingdom of God; and the twelve were with Him, and certain women who had been healed of unclean spirits and infirmities: Mary who is called Magdalene, out of whom seven demons had gone forth, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, who also ministered to Him of their means.' Did single women cling to single men, or did they persist in undisciplined cohabitation, consorting in an enticing fellowship, where wellnigh the whole Church was looking on, so that they followed not to shameful banquetings but to the learning of the pursuits of good conduct?
So far is nothing there described that might be put on a level with our banquetings: no laughter, no jesting is said to have been present. Nor, as is even now wont to happen among certain men, is a choir of chanting virgins asserted to have soothed the ears with poisonous songs. And that I may briefly prove concerning the apostles how greatly a loose familiarity could displease them—they who were constrained to be in doubt even about the Lord Himself speaking with a woman, had not the proven knowledge of His majesty restrained them—as the evangelist relates, saying: 'Meanwhile,' he says, 'His disciples came, and marveled that He was speaking with a woman; yet no one said to Him: What do You seek, or why do You speak with her?'
But what shall I say of the approach of the woman who cast herself down at the Lord's feet, whose weeping and wailing the shameless blush not to demand for the defense of their own wantonness? To such a degree does their own blindness carry them away, that they dare not even strive over like cases, concerning which Solomon says: 'Their own malice blinded them, and they knew not the mysteries of God.' John, moreover, is seen to have taken up the Lord's mother—but a mother whose character her maternal name indicates. Yet I cannot admit other mothers of Christ as well, nor is she to be equated with all women, who bore the Majesty. Elijah, too, was bidden by the Lord to leave the wilderness and to enter the tabernacle of the widow.
At the Lord's command he labored to lodge in the house—he for whom the wilderness had furnished a palace for repose; the Lord offered him an occasion for doing mighty works, that in the time of famine he might rather bestow upon the widow, and upon her orphans, sufficient sustenance—he who, everywhere afflicted with fastings, had endured want, and who, having come, being sent, to be fed, was fed—nay rather, conferring aid upon the wretched, caused the miseries of destitution to be shut out. And this can favor no man's looseness, since there was no opportunity for scandal, where, in passing, and what is worse, he had a needy lodging such as any guest would flee. But here, among those with whom he lodged, he filled them and departed—he who, even had he lingered, could not have been suspected.
What sort of feeling of companionship was there, where there was no food? And what sort of entrance had Elijah to the widow, to whom famine gave hospitality? Whoever you are who wish to be called a disciple of Elijah on account of his lodging with the widow, first endure the afflictions of the wilderness and the ordeal of forty days as a faster, and either you will not seek a woman, or there will be no one who would lodge with a woman—and yet, if you can, keep it to yourself. But to us, in the spirit and power of Elijah, both the angel and the Lord Christ intimate none other than John alone. O the shame! We are constrained to grieve at what we teach, who have come to such a pass that, in comparison with the dissolute, we must dispute concerning the awesome virtues of the saints. Spare now, spare, O insolence!
Never do the saints consent with you—they who transacted their dealings with women in a religious, modest, reverent, chaste, and bashful manner. Or if you still strive to seek out, through the saints, the winding turns of your cavilling, still we know not the friends of God to be remembered save only for veneration—as David taught, saying: 'But to me Your friends, O God, are exceedingly honored.' Let the robbers of modesty and the kidnappers of chastity now go and set forth to their little women the troubles of their complaints. Among our saints they have no refuge at all—men whom the Church, by the authority of the apostle Paul, is forbidden to mingle with. 'And these,' he says, 'avoid: for of these are they who creep into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led away by various lusts.'
After this edict, would that they might trust the examples of angels to avail them! Us they can no longer sway—we who know that even angels fell with women. From these indeed they well borrow their patronage; but we heed no angel against the apostle Paul: 'But even if we,' he says, 'or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel besides that which we have preached to you, let him be anathema.'
They are utterly mad and burn with the fire of women, as many as yield not to this prohibition; and, gaping after obscenities, they had rather die than be content to be torn from the sides of women by any separation, so that, to sate the filth of their greed, they may not for even a point of time be without a woman's pleasure; and this fruit they have in women, that, with intent ever fixed upon them, they may glut the desires of their eyes, lest even a single moment pass in which they lack what they crave. Thus among them integrity dies away, where every consorting—whether by living together or by lodging together—is defiled with corrupt affections. These the holy Peter had designated, saying:
'Rioting in their banquets, having eyes full of adulteries and of ceaseless sins, ensnaring unstable souls.' These too Solomon marks out: 'It is an abomination,' he says, 'before the Lord, the man who fixes his eye.' Plainly Job testifies that he keeps himself pure as regards the eye, who says: 'and if my heart has consented with my eyes.' But in truth that man can be held not liable through his eyes, for whom, against his will, the sudden encounter of a woman has stirred a stumbling-block, which straightway the mind—since it willed it not—expels.
But that man deserves not to escape the disturbance of his sight who keeps by him the material of the stumbling-block, who wishes to enjoy the affections of his craving, who craves to have that which forces an offense upon his eyes—men whose insatiable greed, amid continual occasions of stumbling, can in no way at all be restrained—which Solomon approves, saying: 'Hell and destruction are never satisfied; likewise the eyes of men are insatiable.' And in another place: 'The eye is not satisfied with seeing.' And again: 'What has been created more wicked than the eye?'
Unpricked by this chastisement, they despise the divine prohibitions with the obstinacy of an unspeakable familiarity, and moreover they still plead the cause of charity—when, according to the word of Isaiah, they, devouring bitterness for sweetness, cover naked foulness with the veil of a good name, so that among them true love is violated under a false love. But charity cries out and protests: 'Such as these I have not joined; it is another who counterfeits me by feigning. Never do I resist God's commandments, never do I favor the dissolute; through me I would not have holiness be blamed. A false brotherhood works calumnies against me; perils too have I incurred among false brethren. Come to my aid, my herald; come to my aid, O Paul the apostle; speak my testimony, lest what you announce concerning me be perverted:'
'Now the end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned.' Shall that be reckoned love through which an injury to holiness is assailed with accusations? Or shall the brotherhood of those be esteemed sincere, by whom the daughters of Mother Church are brought into guilt? If such be marked as Christian charity, then without doubt hatreds are better, which, while they separate, defile no one. But this parricidal love is wont to unite persecuting brethren, who gladly suffer the daughters of the Church to be defamed as fornicators through their consorting—against the charity which the apostle Paul taught, saying: 'The love of one's neighbor works no evil.'
A remarkable proof of love, which not only harms its neighbour by a hurtful kinship, but is also unwilling to be subject to the prescriptions of the apostolic command! Let the champions of a love of this sort be confounded — men who are judged by those who, for the common good, forsake even the love owed to their own blood. In almost the whole world the human race is nearly all bound together, and everywhere natural kinship is severed by reciprocal wanderings abroad. Parents can, children can, brothers can, and even — what is more — spouses can break asunder the bonds of nature granted them by God; and shall clergymen, when God does not grant it but rather forbids it, be unable to refuse a love enslaved to the entanglements of women?
Is affinity with those near at hand withheld from kinsfolk, who ought always to be longed for, while clergymen struggle against being separated from women who are strangers to them? These men ought to have done this even if the Lord had laid upon them some singular or unaccustomed command — men who, for accomplishing the impossible, possess the Holy Spirit, whom worldly men do not possess. Whence the apostle John admonishes thus, saying: «Little children, overcome them, for greater is he who is in you than he who is in this world.» But now what is considered even possible for the Gentiles — I will not say for Christians — and is looked upon as an easy and light thing, among clergymen comes to nothing without result; so that it is a small matter for them to despise the commandments of God, unless they have also this further disgrace, that they do not so much as follow — I will not say overcome — the custom of all the nations:
to whom the Lord reproaches through Ezekiel, saying: «You have not walked in my statutes and you have not done my judgements; nay, you have not even acted according to the judgements of the nations that are round about you.» This «love» signifies I know not what shameful thing, since it is thought to be wrung out against nature. And I still have cause for wonder: while I see very many of the Christian married, both husbands and wives alike, who resolve upon continence, choose rather separate dwellings, so that they may be able to keep the agreement of their common vows without provocation of a present spouse, by a harmonious withdrawal — yet our eunuchs cannot bear to sleep without the companionship of a woman?
Among those married ones, conjugal love is counterbalanced by the love of continence; but among these gelded ones, the cohabitation of a woman can never grow wearisome. Let the «love» of the eunuchs now speak — let it speak — lest perhaps in this withdrawal conjugal love be the greater sinner, seeming to have suggested divorce to spouses by the counsel of the apostle Paul: «The time,» he says, «that remains is short. It remains that even those who have wives should be as though they had none.» How great a perversity of love is here stretched forth, that those who have wives strive to be as though not having them, while those who have none glory in being as though they had them! Of such the apostle himself says: «Their glory is in their shame.» «It is love,» they say. O love that is jealous of itself! O charity that longs to be praised by way of reproach!
A great marvel indeed, that the love of virgins makes virgins be believed to be as spouses, and the love of spouses makes spouses be reckoned as virgins! Behold true love, which divides in the married state, in order to join in chastity! Behold holy love, which brings the married to a common absence for common praise! These, to be sure, love one another inseparably — who, that they may bring themselves triumphs, depart from one another; from whom neither crime nor nature nor law nor the Lord nor the apostle has forbidden or taken away the right of a single manner of life together, but for the safeguarding of their shared vows love has persuaded them to be absent by a sundered oneness of mind.
But let those men see whose the love is that they profess to know — men who yield neither to crime nor to nature nor to law nor to the Lord nor to the apostle nor to marriage itself, whom a shameful virginity condemns as much as a gelded married state glorifies those others; for whom it should suffice as a disgraceful punishment that they are judged eunuchs by married men. To their rebuke the sons of Israel too must not be passed over in silence, who in the days of Ezra did not hesitate to drive away the wives and children they had taken against the divine laws, nor did they attempt to excuse themselves against the love of the Lord. I will confess the truth, if I am permitted: those who now attach themselves to keeping other men's women — what would they do if they were commanded to cast away children and wives of their own?
Or when will they be able for Christ's sake to renounce their kinsfolk, they who prefer to Christ's precepts little women who are not even their own? I say that they would more easily deny their own parents for the sake of these same little women than for Christ's sake be able to leave those little women — despising what the Lord himself testified in the Gospel, saying: «If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father or mother or wife and children and brothers and sisters and his own soul, he cannot be my disciple.» If those who hesitate about casting off parents are unworthy of Christ, what do they promise themselves whom no parental affection shows to be despisers for Christ's sake? And by this very fact they are nullified by the merits of those whom they see, for the contemplation of Christ, to except no persons of their kin.
And no less — nay, even worse — do those others confound them, who, fearing to wrestle not only with another's flesh but even with their own, cut themselves off by amputating their genitals. Concerning these I suspend my sentence for the moment, leaving it to be brought forth in another discussion. But to the confusion of the eunuchs I do not hesitate to declare those men the better, who do not spare even themselves — I will not say, dare to hold out temptations to women. Let the spiritual eunuchs answer: what madness is this in the love of women, or what mystery is there in living together with a woman, that to their own ruin they should indulge in another's members, when those others without hesitation cut off even their own? These cast away the members firmly fixed upon themselves, while those cleave themselves to hostile members.
The former do not hesitate to contend, with the torment of a body no longer whole, for the sake of spiritual wholeness; while the latter, without torment, refuse to be whole without the halving companionship of women. Yet no comparison is to be drawn between them from among our own people, lest those who are addicted to any Christian be consoled by whatever judgements. There are still worse men to be recalled, so that it may be a greater punishment to be condemned by one already condemned. Let them consider the Jews, who to this day, for the command of the Law, maim a part of their own flesh by the torture of circumcision, and let them know what they deserve who, though the Gospel commands it, neglect — being circumcised — to accomplish the Lord's will amid the presence of women, not understanding what the Lord himself has said:
«Unless your righteousness abounds more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.» I think too that the idolaters, with their Galli, may reproachfully cast it up against us — men who, cutting themselves off, gladly torture themselves, provided only that, with the loss of their own standing, they may comply with the pretences of their idols. But our clergymen, rather for the gain of their own body, are willing to endure the loss of the women dwelling with them — women whom they ought to tear away even from their own substance, if it should befall that they were born with them, lest, being compared with idolaters and sacrilegious men, they should blush. Of these too the Lord charges them as despisers, saying: «The children of this world are wiser than the children of light.»
Shall then the profane devotion of such men be preferred to our clergymen — men to whom, together with so great destruction, shameful priesthoods are dear? But our clergymen, for the dignity of the heavenly priesthood, shed no blood, endure no sword; there is no wound, there is no torture — but the mere sight of a woman scorches them against the Lord. So do they rush upon women, so do they love women, that they do not hope that the impure mysteries of their love can ever be brought to light — just as, through men like them, such things have been shamefully published abroad and uncovered, men whom the apostle Paul had even then foreseen, saying: «The sins of some men are manifest, going before them to judgement; but some men's sins follow after.»
«And in like manner also good works are manifest, and those that are otherwise cannot be hidden.» But on the contrary they too say: «Several of our despisers, likewise having women in their houses, attained martyrdom, so that an innocent conscience was proved among them.» I will not have anyone stir up against me an argument about martyrdom, because very often adulterers and shedders of blood and drunkards and men guilty of every crime, upon finding occasion for the combat, being converted, have deserved to attain the pardon of martyrdom. For martyrdom is called both a crown and a baptism precisely because it baptizes and crowns alike.
Come now: if it was allowed to certain men, with the fellowship of women unbroken, to earn martyrdom, yet even that very martyrdom was not without indulgence to them — men whom the guilt of a forbidden cohabitation did not absolve, nor could it prove them innocent in that very innocence, since they are seen to have obtained pardon for their contempt of the law, for the foulness of an unlawful manner of life, and — what is graver above all — for a crime against the Church. For indeed that innocence is harmful which damages the reputation of the Bride of Christ.
And since Christ, the innocent Lamb — nay rather, he himself is heavenly innocence, which is truer — despised his whole self for the Church, that he might render her spotless without any stain or wrinkle: what kind of clergyman is he to whom the Bride of Christ is entrusted for this end, that for the love of a single woman he should suffer the whole Church to be blamed? I dare to say: the Son was sent by God the Father from the Father's bosom, and endured to be absent from his kingdom, that he might make the Church innocent — and shall a clergyman be unable to leave a woman's side, lest he render the Church of Christ infamous? But they say: «In martyrdom it is pardoned to us, just as it was granted to our forefathers.»
Let us all then presume the same concerning all our sins: that we who labour to do well may wander amid luxuries and run to and fro through the paths of sinners; let us drop the reins and loosen the bridle. Let us go wherever the world shall carry us off, and wherever the devil shall invite us; let us freely fornicate, envy, plunder, defraud; let us commit all evils untroubled — martyrdom will come to the rescue and we shall escape. For thus the apostle Paul promises: «Let us do evil that good may come» — «whose condemnation is just.»
Let those men entrust their hope to this martyrdom whom the astrologers have taught to have foreknowledge of the morrow, and let those await these crowns who from stargazers have learned to know — above the angels and Christ — the times which the Father has set in his own power; so that even then, before the time of martyrdom, they may recall that they ought to have done well, when they shall have perceived the day of the Lord as a thief. But let us grant that martyrdom hangs over them at any moment now. Meanwhile, before they become martyrs, they lie subject to the laws, so that they may be brought to judgement unless they be disarmed of their weapons. It is a wickedness of audacity for them to set up against the authority of the Lord the persons of parents — from whom the Lord himself has taken away the voice for this contradiction.
«Walk not,» he says, «in the statutes of your fathers, and keep not their judgements, and do not mingle yourselves in their pursuits, and do not defile yourselves. I am the Lord your God. Walk in my precepts and keep my judgements.» Let them know now that the patronage of parents has been taken from them — men who, running hither and thither, seek out the lurking-places of contradictions, that they may never be without women; and because on every side they are forsaken of any support for their defence, at the very last, when all their arguments are exhausted, they suppose that the sentence of the apostle Paul comes to their aid, and they say: «Who are you, to judge another man's servant?»
The apostle Paul indeed acknowledges the words of his own decree when they are brought forward, but he does not recognize the framers and producers of them themselves. For he granted a defence to those who assail no part of the law, and he bestowed patronage on those who do something out of their own vow and hinder nothing of ecclesiastical right. He treats of the right of living and of the free choice of not eating, of each individual. Concerning such matters he commanded that no one be judged — matters which the divine authority, conceding to the will of individuals, mercifully allowed on either side, of doing and of not doing.
But those men he made subject to the ecclesiastical tribunals, whom no impunity has excused as transgressors of an ordinary transgression; so that they who everywhere bring forth against us, as it were a libel of contradiction, «Who are you, to judge another man's servant?», may recognize at the same time both the reasonable and the certain rejoinder which we have received from the same apostle Paul. «We charge you,» he says, «brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw yourselves from the brothers who walk disorderly and not according to the tradition which they received from us.»
We have escaped, as I think, such great bonds of questions, with which the lovers who are eunuchs have been bound by feminine embraces — men who by perverse interpretations are driven to alter the legal decrees, and who prefer to be heard putting forth empty and fabulous inventions rather than themselves to hear the things that are true; men of whom the apostle Paul declares, saying: «They will indeed turn away their hearing from the truth, and will be turned unto fables.» Let them search out whatever they still will, that they may resist the truth on behalf of women. They have no victory with whom, against Ezra, a woman rather than the truth has conquered. But you, most beloved sons, I address not only with persuasion but also with authority.
Despise such raving, whose questions you know the apostle Paul everywhere condemned, just as he wrote to the Romans, saying: «I beseech you, brothers, to observe diligently those who cause dissensions and offences contrary to the doctrine which you have learned, and turn away from them.» So too he charges Timothy: «Strive not,» he says, «about words, for it is profitable for nothing, except to the subverting of the hearers. Take careful heed to present yourself approved unto God, a workman that cannot be reproved, rightly handling the word of truth. But shun foolish and empty talkings, for they advance much toward impiety, and their speech spreads like a cancer.»
And to show what doctrine is fitting for clergymen who are to be appointed for the doing away of such questions, he intimates thus to Titus also, saying: «But speak the things that befit sound doctrine: that the aged men be sober, prudent, sound in faith, in love, in sincere patience.» Therefore let your obedience receive plain instructions, and shun the changeling deceit of contradictions. Cleanse a pure path for your steps, and do not tread upon thorns and briars, lest the good seed be unable, because of the thickets of thorns, to bring forth for us the fruit of holiness. Whence the prophet Jeremiah thus exhorts and teaches, saying: «Sow not,» he says, «among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to your God, circumcise the foreskin of your heart.»