文集 第 19 章

The heretics take marriage away; the Psychics heap it on. The former do not marry even once; the latter marry more than once. What are you about, O law of the Creator? Between alien eunuchs and your own charioteers you complain as much of domestic subservience as of outside disdain; accordingly they wound you who abuse marriage no less than those who do not use it. But neither is continence of this sort to be praised, because it is heretical, nor is license to be defended, because it is psychic; the one blasphemes, the other runs riot; the one destroys the God of marriage, the other confounds Him. With us, however — whom the recognition of spiritual gifts rightly makes to be called Spiritual — continence is religious, with a license that is modest; both stand with the Creator: continence honors the law of marriage, license tempers it;

the one is not constrained, the other is governed; the one has free choice, this one a limit. We know one marriage, even as one God. The law of marriage bears the greater honor where it has also modesty. But to the Psychics, who do not receive the Spirit, the things that are of the Spirit are not pleasing. Thus, while the things of the Spirit do not please, the things of the flesh will please, as being contrary to the Spirit. 'The flesh,' he says, 'lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh.' And what will the flesh lust for, save the things that are more of the flesh? For which cause, even in the beginning, the flesh was made a stranger to the Spirit: 'My Spirit,' He says, 'shall not abide in these men for ever, because they are flesh.'

And so they reproach the discipline of monogamy as heresy, and for no cause more are they compelled to deny the Paraclete than when they reckon Him the founder of a new discipline — and indeed a most harsh one to them — so that on this first of all we must take our stand, in a general re-examination: whether it can be that the Paraclete taught anything of the sort which could be counted either new, against catholic tradition, or burdensome, against the light burden. Concerning both, however, the Lord Himself has pronounced; for He said: 'I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now';

'when the Holy Spirit is come, He shall lead you into all truth' — He surely intimates well enough that that One would teach things which both could be thought new, as never before published, and somewhat burdensome, as for that reason not published. 'Therefore,' you say, 'by this line of argument anything whatever, new and burdensome, could be ascribed to the Paraclete, even if it came from an adversary spirit.' Not at all; for an adversary spirit would appear from the diversity of its preaching, first adulterating the rule of faith, and so adulterating the order of discipline — because that which is prior in rank, its corruption comes first, that is, the corruption of faith, which is prior to discipline: first must a man be a heretic as toward God, and then as toward the ordinance.

But the Paraclete, having many things to teach which the Lord deferred to Him, will, according to the fore-appointment, first bear witness to Christ Himself — such as we believe Him, with the whole order of God the Creator — and will glorify Him and make mention of Him; and thus, from that principal rule, He will reveal those many things which pertain to disciplines, the integrity of the preaching speaking their faith for them, though they be new, because they are now revealed, though burdensome, because not even now are they endured — yet of no other Christ than He who said that He had also many other things which would be taught by the Paraclete, no less burdensome than those things by which men at that time could not yet be borne. But whether monogamy is burdensome, let the still shameless weakness of the flesh look to that;

but whether it is new, let this meanwhile be established. For we say this further: even if the Paraclete had today defined total and entire virginity or continence, so as not to permit the fervor of the flesh to be foamed off even in a single marriage, not even so would He seem to introduce anything new, since the Lord Himself opens the kingdom of heaven to eunuchs, being Himself indeed a eunuch; looking to whom the Apostle also, being for that reason himself made a eunuch, prefers continence. 'But,' you say, 'with the right of marrying kept safe.' Kept safe, plainly — and we shall see to what extent — yet none the less broken down on that side whereon he prefers continence. 'It is good,' he says, 'for a man not to touch a woman'; therefore it is evil to touch;

for nothing is contrary to a good except an evil — and that therefore it remains that even those who have wives should be as though not having them, so much the more that those who have none ought not to have. He gives also the reasons why he so counsels: that the unmarried think about God, but the married, how each may please his own spouse in marriage. And I can maintain that what is permitted is not purely good; for what is purely good is not permitted, but is lawful of itself; a permission has its cause sometimes even in necessity. In short, in this case it is not the will of the one permitting that men marry; for he wills something else: 'I wish,' he says, 'you all to be as I also am.' And when he shows that it is better, what indeed does he confirm that he wills, save what he has already set forth as better?

And so, if he permits something other than what he willed, permitting not from will but from necessity, he shows that not to be purely good which he indulged unwillingly. In short, when he says, 'It is better to marry than to burn,' what kind of good is that to be understood, which is better even than a punishment — which cannot seem better save when compared with the worst? A good is that which of itself holds this name, without comparison — I do not say with an evil, but even with another good — so that, even if it be overshadowed when compared with another good, it none the less remains in the name of good. But if it is forced to be called good only by comparison with an evil, it is not so much a good as a kind of lesser evil, which, being darkened by a higher evil, is driven to the name of good. Take away, in short, the condition, so that you say:

'It is better to marry than to burn' — and I ask whether you would dare to say, 'It is better to marry,' without adding wherein it is better. Therefore it is now not better, and since it is not better, neither is it good, the condition being removed which, while it makes that thing better than another, thereby forces it to be held good. It is better to lose one eye than two; yet if you depart from the comparison of the two, it will not be better to have one eye, because neither is it good. What now, if he adapts the whole indulgence of marrying from his own, that is, from human, judgment, out of that necessity of which we spoke, namely, that it is better to marry than to burn? In short, turning to the other case, by saying:

'But to the married I give charge, not I, but the Lord,' he shows that those things which he had said above were not of the Lord's authority, but of human estimation. But where he turns men's minds back to continence — 'But I wish you all to be so' — 'yet I think,' he says, 'that I too have the Spirit of God,' so that, if he had indulged anything out of necessity, he might revoke it by the authority of the Holy Spirit. And John too, warning that we ought so to walk even as the Lord did, surely admonished us to walk also according to the holiness of the flesh. So, more plainly: 'And everyone,' he says, 'who has this hope in Him purifies himself, even as He also is pure.' For elsewhere too: 'Be holy, even as He was holy' — namely, in the flesh;

for of the spirit he would not have said it, since the spirit is of itself acknowledged as holy and does not await an admonition to holiness, which is its own proper nature; but the flesh is taught holiness — the flesh which in Christ too was holy. Therefore, if all these things blot out the license of marrying, both when the condition of the license is examined and when the preference of continence is laid upon it, why could not the same Spirit, coming after the apostles to lead the discipline into all truth by degrees of the seasons — according to that of Ecclesiastes, 'There is a time for everything' — now impose the final clasp upon the flesh, now calling men away from marriage not obliquely but openly, since the time has now been made more concentrated, some hundred and sixty years being drawn out from that time onward?

Would you not yourself reconsider within yourself that this discipline is old, foreshown even then in the flesh and in the will of the Lord, and thereafter in the counsels no less than the examples of His apostles? 'Long ago we were destined to this holiness; the Paraclete introduces nothing new; what He forewarned, He defines; what He sustained, He demands.' And now, reconsidering these things, you will easily persuade yourself that it much more befitted the Paraclete to preach single marriages, He who could have preached none at all; and that it is the more to be believed that He tempered what it would have become Him even to have taken away. If you understand what Christ wills, in this too you ought to recognize the Paraclete as an advocate, in that He excuses your weakness from total continence. Let the mention of the Paraclete now withdraw, as of some author of our own;

Let us unroll the common records of the ancient Scriptures. By these very texts it is shown by us that the discipline of monogamy is neither new nor foreign, but rather ancient and proper to Christians, so that you may regard the Paraclete as the restorer of it rather than its founder. As concerns its antiquity, what more ancient form can be brought forward than the very origin of the human race? God fashioned one woman for the man, one rib of his being plucked out, and that surely from among several. Moreover, in the very preface of that work He says: 'It is not good for man to be alone; let us make him a helper.' For He would have said 'helpers' if He had destined him for several wives. He also added a law concerning the future, since it was said by way of prophecy:

'And the two shall be in one flesh'—not three nor more; moreover, they are no longer two, if they are more. The law stood firm; and so the union of marriage persisted in the ancestors of the race down to the very end—not because there were no other women, but because for this reason there were none, lest the first-fruits of the race should be defiled by a double marriage. Otherwise, had God so willed, it could even have been possible; certainly He would have taken from the multitude of his daughters, having Eve no less from his own bones and flesh, if this could be done piously. But when the first crime, homicide, was inaugurated in fratricide, no crime was so worthy of second place as a double wedding; for it makes no difference whether one man has had two wives one at a time, or two women have each together taken two husbands: the number of the joined and of the separated is the same.

Yet God's institution, once suffering violence through Lamech, thereafter stood firm to the very end of that race; there arose no second Lamech as husband of two women: Scripture denies what it does not note. Other iniquities provoked the Flood—iniquities but once indulged, such as they were, yet not seventy times seven, as two marriages deserved. Moreover, the reformation of the second human race is reckoned by a monogamous mother: again two undertake to grow and multiply into one flesh—Noah and his wife and their sons in single marriages. Even among the animals themselves monogamy is recognized, lest even the beasts should be born of adultery: 'Of all beasts,' He says, 'of all flesh, two shalt thou bring into the ark, that they may live with thee; they shall be male and female';

'of the flying creatures according to their kind, and of all the serpents of the earth according to their kind, two of every sort shall come in to thee, male and female.' In the same fashion He commands that even the sevens be chosen from pairs, from one male and one female. What more shall I say? Even the unclean birds were not permitted to enter with two females apiece. This much, then, as regards the testimony of our beginnings, the patronage of our origin, and the prior judgement of the divine institution.

This surely is a law, not a mere memorial, since, if it was so done from the beginning, we find ourselves directed to the beginning by Christ, who—when in the question of divorce He says that this was permitted by Moses because of their hardness of heart, but that from the beginning it was not so—without doubt recalls the indissolubility of marriage to its beginning; and therefore those whom God from the beginning joined into one flesh, the two, today man shall not separate. The Apostle also says, writing to the Ephesians, that God purposed in Himself, for the dispensation of the fullness of the times, to gather back all things again unto the Head, that is, unto the beginning, in Christ, both the things which are above the heavens and those upon the earth, in Him.

So too the Lord took upon Himself the two letters of Greece, the first and the last, as the figures of the beginning and the end meeting together in Himself, in order that, just as Alpha rolls onward to Omega and again Omega is folded back to Alpha, so He might show that in Himself is both the running of the beginning down to the end and the return of the end back to the beginning, so that every dispensation, terminating in Him through whom it was begun—namely through the Word of God, who was made flesh—might accordingly end just as it also began.

And to such a degree are all things in Christ recalled to the beginning, that even faith has returned from circumcision to the wholeness of that flesh, as it was from the beginning; and freedom of foods with abstinence from blood alone, as it was from the beginning; and the indissolubility of marriage, as it was from the beginning; and the restraining of divorce, which from the beginning was not; and finally, the whole man is recalled into paradise, where he was from the beginning. Why then should Adam not also refer back to us at least as a monogamist—Adam, who can be as whole as he was when he was sent forth from there? As concerns, therefore, the restoration of the beginning, the reasoning both of your ordering and of your hope demands of you that which was from the beginning;

according to the beginning, which is both reckoned to you in Adam and re-reckoned in Noah, choose in which of the two you would count your beginning: in both the discipline of monogamy defends you for itself. But even if the beginning transmits to the end as Alpha to Omega, so that the end likewise remits to the beginning as Omega to Alpha, and thus our reckoning is transferred into Christ, from the animal into the spiritual—for not first is that which is spiritual, but that which is animal, and afterward that which is spiritual—let us accordingly see whether you owe this very same thing to this second reckoning also, whether it befits that the last Adam too should conform you to the same form as the first, since the last Adam, that is Christ, was wholly unmarried, as also was the first Adam before his exile.

But, having given by the example of His own flesh a concession to your weakness, the more perfect Adam—that is, Christ—more perfect also in this respect, that He was more entire, meets you, if you are willing, as a eunuch in the flesh; but if you are not equal to this, He comes to you as a monogamist in the spirit, having one Church as His bride according to the figure which the Apostle interprets as that great sacrament, concerning Christ and the Church—the two corresponding to carnal monogamy through the spiritual. You see, therefore, how, even in Christ, when you are being reckoned anew, you cannot enroll Him without the profession of monogamy, unless you are in the flesh what He is in the spirit—although you ought equally to be also in the flesh what He was. But let us still seek out for ourselves certain founders of our origin.

For to certain people the monogamous parents Adam and Noah are not pleasing; perhaps not even Christ. So at last they appeal to Abraham, though they are forbidden to acknowledge any father besides God. Well, let Abraham now be our father: let Paul be so also, for he says, 'In the Gospel I begot you.' Show yourself Abraham's son as well; for the reckoning is not indiscriminate in his case: there is a definite time in which he is your father. For if we are counted sons of Abraham by faith, as the Apostle teaches, saying to the Galatians, 'You surely know that they who are of faith, these are the sons of Abraham,' when did Abraham believe God and it was reckoned to him for righteousness? While still, I suppose, in monogamy, for he was not yet in circumcision.

But if afterward he was changed into both—into digamy through concubinage with the handmaid, and into circumcision through the seal of the covenant—you cannot acknowledge him as father except at that time when he believed God, since it is according to faith that you are his son, not according to the flesh; or if you follow the later Abraham as father, so as to follow him as a digamist too, then receive also the circumcised one. If you reject the circumcised one, then you will refuse also the digamist; you will not be able to mix together his two dispensations, which are diverse from each other in a twofold manner. Digamy began together with circumcision, and monogamy together with uncircumcision: if you receive digamy, admit circumcision also; if you uphold uncircumcision, you are bound also to monogamy.

Nay, you are the son of Abraham's monogamy just as you are of his uncircumcision, so that, if you are now circumcised, you are not his son, because you will not be of faith, but of the seal of the faith that was justified in uncircumcision. Having the Apostle, learn along with the Galatians. Accordingly, even if you have now brought digamy upon yourself, you are not his whose faith preceded in monogamy. For although he is afterward named father of many nations, yet it is of those who, from a faith preceding digamy, may be counted sons of Abraham. From then on, let the matters look to themselves: figures are one thing, forms another, images another, definitions another; images pass away when fulfilled, definitions abide to be fulfilled; images prophesy, definitions govern.

What that digamy of Abraham portended, the same Apostle teaches, interpreting it as pertaining to both testaments, just as he determines that our seed is likewise called in Isaac. If you are of the freewoman, you belong to Isaac; he certainly endured but one marriage. These, then, as I suppose, are they among whom I am reckoned. The others I know not; and if I look around at their examples—of a certain David forcing marriages upon himself even through bloodshed, of a certain Solomon rich even in wives—being bidden to follow the better, you have also Joseph, husband of one wife (and on this account I dare to call him better than his father), you have Moses, God's counselor at close hand, you have Aaron the chief priest.

The second Moses too—that is, of the second people, he who led the image of us into the promise of God, in whom the name of the Lord was first consecrated—was no digamist. After the ancient examples of the original persons, let us pass likewise to the ancient records of the legal Scriptures, that we may treat in order of the whole of our equipment.

And since certain people at times declare that they have nothing to do with the Law—which Christ did not dissolve but fulfilled—while at other times they snatch up such things of the Law as they please, we too plainly say this, that the Law has passed away in such a way that its burdens indeed (which, according to the sentence of the Apostles, not even the fathers had strength to bear) have been remitted, but those things which pertain to righteousness not only remain reserved, but are even enlarged, so that, namely, our righteousness may be able to abound over the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. And if righteousness, then surely chastity as well.

If, then, because it is enjoined in the Law that a man take in marriage his brother's wife when the brother has died childless, in order to raise up seed to his brother, and this can happen rather often to one and the same person—according to that crafty question of the Sadducees—men therefore suppose that on this ground frequency of marriages is elsewhere permitted, they will first have to understand the reasoning of the precept itself, and thus they will know that its reasoning, now ceasing, is among those things which have been done away. It was necessary to succeed to the marriage of a brother who had died childless: first, because that ancient blessing had still to run its course, 'Increase and abound'; next, because the offenses of the fathers were exacted even from the sons; thirdly, because eunuchs and the barren were held in disgrace.

And so, lest those be judged accursed likewise who had departed childless, not through any fault of nature, but through being forestalled by death, therefore for such men a substitute and, as it were, posthumous offspring was provided out of their own stock. But when the end of the times, at the Apostle's leading, abolished the 'Increase and abound'—'It remains,' he says, 'that both they who have wives be as though they had none, because the time is contracted'—and the sour grape eaten by the fathers ceased to set the children's teeth on edge—for each shall die in his own sin—and eunuchs not only were freed from disgrace, but even earned grace, being invited into the kingdom of heaven: the law of succeeding to a brother's marriage having been buried, the contrary of it prevailed, namely, of not succeeding to a brother's marriage.

And thus, as we have said before, that which has ceased to be valid, its reasoning having ceased, cannot lend its argument to something else. Therefore the wife of a deceased husband shall not marry—she who, if she marries, will surely marry a brother; for we are all brethren; and she who is to marry has to marry in the Lord, that is, not a heathen but a brother, since even the old Law removes the marriage of aliens. But since it is provided also in Leviticus, 'Whoever shall take his brother's wife, it is uncleanness, it is a shame; he shall die childless,' without doubt, while he is forbidden to marry anew, she too is forbidden, having no one to marry except a brother. How, then, this will square both with the Apostle and with the Law—which he does not assail in its entirety—will be shown when we come to his epistle itself.

Meanwhile, as concerns the Law, its arguments suit us the better; for the same Law forbids priests to marry anew; it also bids that a priest's daughter, being a widow or cast off, if she has no seed, return to her father's house and be nourished from his bread. Therefore, 'if she has no seed'—not that, if she has, she may marry again (for how much more does she not marry if she has children?)—but that, if she has them, she may rather be nourished by her son than by her father, so that the son too may carry out God's precept, 'Honor father and mother.' But us Jesus, the supreme and great Priest of the Father, clothing us with His own, has made priests to God His Father—according to John—since they who are baptized in Christ have put on Christ.

For He also recalls that young man who was hastening to his father's funeral rites, in order to show that we are called priests by Him, whom the Law forbade to attend the burial of their parents: 'Over no dead soul,' He says, 'shall the priest enter, and over his father and over his mother he shall not be defiled.' Ought we, then, to observe this interdict too? By no means; for our one Father, God, lives, and our Mother, the Church, and we are not dead who live to God, nor do we bury the dead, since they too live in Christ; assuredly we are priests called by Christ, debtors to monogamy by the ancient law of God, which then prophesied of us in His priests.

Now, turning to the law properly our own, that is, the Gospel, by what sort of examples are we received, as we come to its sentences? Behold, at once, as if on the threshold, two presiding patrons of Christian sanctity meet us, monogamy and continence: the one chaste in Zacharias the priest, the other entire in John the forerunner; the one appeasing God, the other proclaiming Christ; the one proclaiming a priest in full, the other showing forth one greater than a prophet—namely, him who not only proclaimed or pointed to Christ before men, but even baptized Christ. For who could more worthily consecrate the Lord's body than such flesh as both conceived it and gave it birth?

And Christ indeed a virgin brought forth, one who was to marry but once after the birth, so that both titles of sanctity might be discharged in Christ's reckoning through a mother both virgin and wife of one man. But when the infant is presented in the Temple, who takes Him into his hands, who first recognizes Him in the spirit? A man just and cautious, and assuredly no digamist—lest Christ should soon be more worthily proclaimed by a woman, an aged widow and wife of one man, who, being also dedicated to the Temple, sufficiently foreshadowed in herself what sort of persons ought to cleave to the spiritual Temple, that is, the Church. Such witnesses the Lord, when an infant, having found, had no others also when grown.

Peter alone I find to have been a husband, by reason of his mother-in-law; a monogamist I presume him to be, by reason of the Church, which upon him was to place every grade of its order composed of monogamists. Since I do not find the rest to have been husbands, I must of necessity understand them either as eunuchs or as continent. For it is not the case that, if among the Greeks women and wives are reckoned by a common term, for the ease of custom—though there is a proper term for 'wives'—we should on that account so interpret Paul as if he showed that the apostles had wives. For if he had been discussing marriages—which he does in what follows, where the Apostle could rather have named some example—he would rightly seem to say: 'For have we not power to lead about wives, as also the rest of the apostles, and Cephas?'

But when he adds those things which, concerning the provision of sustenance, show his abstinence, saying, 'For have we not power to eat and to drink?', he does not point to wives led about by the apostles—which even they who have none nevertheless have power to eat and drink—but simply to the women who, attending upon them by the same practice as they did upon the Lord, ministered to them. But indeed, if Christ reproves the scribes and Pharisees for sitting in the seat of Moses and not doing the things they taught, how is it that He would set upon His own seat those who would remember rather to enjoin the sanctity of the flesh than also to practice it—which He would insinuate to them by every means, as both to be taught and to be done?

First by His own example; then by other arguments—when He says that of children is the kingdom of heaven; when He makes others, after their marriages, companions of these as children; when He calls us to the simplicity of the dove, a bird not only harmless but also chaste, whom one male alone knows; when He denies to the Samaritan woman a husband, so as to show that a multiple husband is an adulterer; when, in the revelation of His glory, out of so many saints and prophets He prefers to have with Him Moses and Elijah, the one a monogamist, the other a eunuch (for Elijah was none other than John, who came in the power and spirit of Elijah); when that man, a glutton and a drinker, a frequenter of luncheons and suppers with publicans and sinners, dines but once at a single wedding, though surely many were marrying;

for He would have wished to celebrate them as often as they were held. But these arguments might rather be thought forced from conjectures, if the very sentences had not stood by them—the sentences which the Lord uttered in His treatment of divorce, when He now forbids what was once permitted: first, because from the beginning it was not so, as neither was the number of marriages; then, because whom God has joined man shall not separate, that is, lest he act against the Lord. For He alone shall separate who also joined; and He shall separate, not however through the hardness of divorce, which He rebukes and restrains, but through the debt of death, since one of two sparrows does not fall to the ground without the Father's will.

Therefore, if those whom God has joined man shall not separate by divorce, is it at all consistent that those whom He has separated by death man should join by a new marriage—thus about to work, against the will of God, a joining as if he had separated a union? This much as regards the will of God, not to be destroyed, and the form of the beginning, to be rebuilt. Moreover, yet another reasoning conspires—nay, not another, but that very one which imposed the form of the beginning and moved the will of God to the prohibition of divorce: that whoever shall put away his wife, save for the cause of adultery, makes her to commit adultery, and whoever shall take her who is put away by her husband, commits adultery too.

'Cannot the divorced woman also marry lawfully, and if she has committed anything of the kind without the name of marriage, does it not incur the reproach of adultery, since adultery is a crime within marriage?' God has judged otherwise than men, so that wholly, whether through wedlock or promiscuously, the admission of another man is pronounced adultery—nay, indeed. Therefore let us see what marriage is in God's sight, and thus we shall know what likewise is adultery. Marriage is when God joins two into one flesh, or, finding them joined in the same flesh, has set His seal upon the joining; adultery is when, the two being in any way disjoined, another flesh—nay, an alien flesh—is mingled in, concerning which it cannot be said, 'This is flesh of my flesh and this bone of my bones.'

For once this has been both done and pronounced, as from the beginning so also now, it cannot suit with another flesh. And so you will say without cause that God does not wish the divorced woman, while her husband lives, to be joined to another man, as though He would wish it once he were dead; since, if she is not bound to a dead husband, then likewise not to a living one; she will as little be held to him in a divorce that dissolves the marriage as she will by death, seeing that that by which she was held has been snatched away from him. To whom, then, she will be held, it makes no difference at all whether she marries away from a living or a dead husband; for she does not offend against him, but against her own self: 'Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits adultery sins against his own body.'

And he commits adultery, as we have established before, who mingles to himself another flesh over that former one which God either joined into the two or found already joined. And therefore He took away divorce, which from the beginning was not, in order to fortify that which from the beginning was—the perseverance of the two in one flesh—lest the necessity or occasion of a third incarnation should break in, permitting divorce to that cause alone, if perchance it should occur, for which precaution is taken. Indeed, divorce so did not exist from the beginning that among the Romans that kind of hardness is noted as first committed after the six-hundredth year from the founding of the city. But they, even without divorcing, mingle adulteries; for us, even if we should divorce, it will not even be lawful to marry.

For the more easily perceiving his meaning, this must be the more insistently trodden in beforehand: that a woman is more bound to a deceased husband, so as the less to admit another man. For let us consider that divorce either arises from discord or produces discord, but that death comes about by law, not from any human offense, and is the debt of all, even of those who are not husbands. Therefore, if a divorced woman—who, through discord and wrath and hatred and their causes, injury or insult or any complaint whatever, has been separated both in soul and in body—is bound to an enemy, not to say a husband, how much more is she bound who, separated by no fault of her own or of her husband but by the event of the Lord's law, has not been separated from the marriage but left in it, and will belong even to the deceased, to whom, even deceased, she owes concord?

From him she has heard no divorce, she has not departed; to him she has written no bill of divorce, she is with him; him whom she was unwilling to lose, she retains; she has with her the liberty of the soul, which represents to a person, by an imaginary enjoyment, all the things it does not possess. In fine, I put the question to the woman herself: 'Tell me, sister, did you send your husband on before you in peace?' What will she answer? Was it in discord? Then she is the more bound to him, with whom she has a cause before God; she has not departed, being still held. But in peace? Then it is necessary that she persevere in that peace with him whom she can now no longer divorce—nor even so about to marry, if she could have divorced him.

Indeed, she both prays for his soul and, in the meanwhile, asks for him refreshment, and, in the first resurrection, fellowship, and she makes offering on the yearly days of his falling asleep. For unless she does these things, she has, so far as in her lies, truly divorced him—and that the more iniquitously, the more it would have been fair to do so; and this the more shamefully, if it be because she could not—the more, indeed, worthily so, if it be because she did not deserve to. Or shall we perhaps be nothing after death, according to some Epicurus, and not according to Christ? But if we have believed in the resurrection of the dead, we shall surely be bound to those with whom we are to rise again, being about to render an account of one another.

But if in that age they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage, but shall be equal to the angels, shall we not on that account be bound to our deceased spouses, because there will be no restitution of marriage? Nay, we shall be the more bound, because we are destined for a better state, being to rise again into spiritual fellowship, about to recognize both our own selves and our own people. Otherwise, how shall we sing thanks to God for eternity, if there shall not remain in us the sense and the memory of this debt? We shall be reformed in substance, not in consciousness?

Therefore, we who shall be with God shall be together, since all are one before God—though the reward be varied, though there be many mansions with the same Father—having labored for the one penny of the same reward, that is, of eternal life, in which God will the more not separate those whom He joined, seeing that in this lesser life He forbids them to be separated. Since these things are so, how shall she be free for another man, who is occupied with her own even for the future?—but we speak to both sexes, even if the discourse is addressed to one, since one discipline presides over all—shall she have one thing in the spirit and another in the flesh too? This will be adultery: the consciousness of one woman toward two men.

If the one is disjoined from the flesh, yet remains in the heart—there, where, even gathered without any congress of the flesh, adultery is beforehand accomplished out of concupiscence, and marriage out of the will—he is still a husband up to now, possessing that very thing through which he was also made a husband, that is, the mind, in which, if another too shall dwell, this will be a crime. Otherwise he is not excluded, if he has departed from the baser commerce of the flesh: he is a more honored husband, in proportion as he has been made purer.

Therefore, that you may 'marry in the Lord,' according to the Apostle also—if indeed you care even for this—what sort of person are you, demanding that marriage which is not lawful for those to have from whom you demand it: from a monogamous bishop, from presbyters and deacons of the same sacrament, from widows, whose sect you have refused in yourself? And they, forsooth, will give husbands and wives just like morsels of bread—for this is how it is among them: 'To everyone that asks of you, you shall give'—and they will join you in the Church, the Virgin, the one and only bride of the one Christ, and you shall pray for your husbands, the new and the old? Choose to which you would present yourself an adulteress; to both, I suppose. But if you were wise, you would keep silence to the dead: let your silence be a divorce to him, now that you are enrolled in another's marriage settlements.

In this way you will win a new husband, if you forget the old one: you ought the more to please him, on whose account you have not preferred to please God. These things the psychici claim that the Apostle approved, or else did not reconsider at all, when he wrote: 'The woman is bound as long as her husband lives; but if he is dead, she is free: let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord.' For from this little chapter they defend the license of a second marriage—nay, even of very many, if of a second; for what has once ceased to be single is liable to every number. But in what sense the Apostle wrote will thus shine forth, if first it be established that he did not write it in that sense which the psychici employ;

and it will be established, if anyone recalls those things which are contrary to this little chapter, both in doctrine and in intention and in Paul's own proper discipline. For if he remits second marriages, which from the beginning were not, how does he affirm that all things are gathered back to the beginning in Christ? If he wishes us to repeat our marriages, how does he defend that our seed in Isaac was with but one married author? How does he arrange the whole order of the Church out of monogamists, if this discipline does not first prevail among the laity, from whom the order of the Church advances? How does he call those still placed in marriage away from the fruit of marriage, saying that the time is contracted, if he recalls again into marriage those who have slipped out of marriage by death?

If these things are contrary to that little chapter of which we are treating, it will be established, as we have said, that he did not write it in that sense which the psychici employ; for it is easier that that one little chapter should admit of some reasoning which is in accord with the rest, than that the Apostle should seem to have taught things at variance with each other. That reasoning we shall be able to recognize in the very subject matter. What was this subject matter for the Apostle in writing such things? The infancy of a new Church, and one just then most vigorously arising, which he was nourishing, namely, with milk, not yet with the solid food of a stronger doctrine; so that, on account of that infancy of faith, they were as yet ignorant what they ought to do concerning the necessity of the flesh and of sex. Its very kinds too we understand from his rescripts, when he says:

But concerning the things about which you write: 'It is good for a man not to touch a woman; yet on account of fornications let each man have his own wife' -- by this he shows that there were persons who, being already in marriage, were overtaken by the faith and feared lest it might not thereafter be lawful for them to make use of their own marriage, because they had come to believe in the holy flesh of Christ. And yet he grants this by way of indulgence, not by way of command; that is, permitting it, not enjoining that it be done so. For the rest, he would have preferred all to be what he himself also was. Accordingly, writing back also concerning divorce, he shows that some had been thinking about that matter too, and this especially because in heathen marriages they did not think that one ought to persevere after the faith. They were seeking counsel also concerning virgins -- for there was no commandment of the Lord on the point --:

that it is good for a man, if he so remain, namely just as he was found at the time of the faith: 'Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek release; are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you have taken a wife, you have not sinned' -- because a second wife who is first after the faith will not be reckoned to him who was loosed from a wife before the faith; for from the faith our very life itself is reckoned. But here he says that he is sparing them, for otherwise, amid the straitness of the times, a pressure of the flesh would follow upon those refusing the encumbrances of marriage; nay rather, that solicitude ought to be had by pleasing the Lord than the husband. And so he revokes what he had permitted.

So then, in that very same chapter in which he laid down that each one ought to persevere in that calling in which he shall be called, adding: 'A woman is bound so long as her husband lives; but if he shall have fallen asleep, she is free: let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord' -- he shows that this woman too is to be understood as one who herself likewise was found loosed from a husband, just as the man was loosed from a wife, the loosing being brought about by death, of course, not by divorce; for he would not permit those who have been divorced to marry, against the former precept. And so a woman also, if she marries, does not sin, because here too the second husband will not be counted, who after the faith is the first; and it is so much the case, that on this account he added:

'Only in the Lord,' because the matter concerned a woman who had had a heathen husband and, having lost him, had come to believe -- lest, namely, even after the faith she should presume that she could marry a heathen, although the merely natural men do not even care about this. Let us plainly recognize that it does not stand thus in the authentic Greek, in the way it has passed into common use through the corruption -- whether crafty or artless -- of two syllables: 'But if her husband shall have fallen asleep,' as though it sounded of the future and thereby seemed to pertain to her who has already lost her husband while in the faith. Now if this were so, then, license being sent forth to infinity, it would give a husband as often as one was lost, without any modesty of marrying, even heathens being suitable. But if it were as though of the future:

'if anyone's husband shall have died,' just as much would the future also pertain to her whose husband dies before the faith. Take it as you will, so long as you do not overturn the rest. For since these sentences also precede: 'Have you been called as a slave? Do not be concerned; have you been called in uncircumcision? Do not be circumcised; have you been called circumcised? Do not draw over the foreskin' -- with which this agrees: 'Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek release; are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife' -- it is quite manifest that these things pertain to those who, being established in a new and recent calling, were consulting about the matters in which they had been overtaken by the faith.

This will be the interpretation of that chapter, to be tested by this criterion: whether it accords with the occasion and the cause, and with both the examples and arguments that precede as well as the statements and senses that follow, and above all whether it accords with the Apostle's own counsel and settled purpose; for nothing is so much to be guarded against as that he be found at variance with himself. XII. Hear now another most subtle argument from the contrary side. 'So far,' they say, 'did the Apostle permit the repetition of marriage, that he bound to the yoke of monogamy only those who are in the clergy; for what he prescribes to certain persons, this he does not prescribe to all.' Does he then not prescribe to bishops alone even what he enjoins upon all, if what he prescribes to bishops he does not also enjoin upon all?

Is it therefore prescribed to all because also to bishops, and to bishops because also to all? For whence come bishops and clergy? Is it not from all? If not all are held to monogamy, whence come monogamists into the clergy? Or ought some separate order of monogamists to be instituted, from which the selection into the clergy may be made? But when we are exalted and puffed up against the clergy, then we are all one, then we are all priests, because 'He has made us priests to God and the Father'; yet when we are challenged to the equalization of priestly discipline, we lay aside the fillets and are no longer equals. The matter concerned ecclesiastical orders, what sort of men ought to be ordained.

It was fitting, therefore, that the whole form of common discipline should be set forth on its own front, being, as it were, an edict destined to make an impression upon all, so that the people might the better know the order to be observed by them which makes the overseers, and lest even the honour itself should flatter itself into something toward license, as though from the privilege of place. The Holy Spirit foresaw that some would say, 'All things are lawful for bishops' -- just as that Utinensian of yours did not even fear the Scantinian law. For how many who preside among you are from a second marriage, insulting the Apostle, surely without blushing, when these things are read under their presidency! Come now, you who suppose that the acceptance of monogamy was made only concerning bishops, withdraw also from the rest of your titles of discipline which, together with monogamy, are ascribed to bishops:

do not be blameless, sober, well-behaved, of good deportment, hospitable, apt to teach; nay rather, be given to wine and [ready of hand to strike and] quarrelsome and a lover of money, and one not ruling his household nor caring for the discipline of his children, and not even seeking a good report from those outside. For if bishops have their own law concerning monogamy, then the other things too, which it will behove to be added to monogamy, will have been written for bishops; but for the laity, whom monogamy does not befit, the rest also are foreign. You have escaped, O natural man, if you will, from the bonds of the whole discipline; prescribe constantly that those things are not enjoined upon all which are commanded to certain persons.

Or if the other things indeed are common, but monogamy alone has been imposed upon bishops only, must those alone be pronounced Christians upon whom the whole discipline has been laid? XIII. 'But writing also to Timothy he wills that the young women marry, bear children, act as mothers of families.' He directs this to such as he indicates above -- young widows who, having been overtaken in widowhood and having for some time followed it, after they have held Christ among their delights, wish to marry, incurring the judgment that they have annulled their first faith, that namely by which they were found and made profession in widowhood, in which they do not persevere.

On this account he wills that they marry, lest they should afterwards annul the first faith of the widowhood they had undertaken -- not that they should marry as often as, being tempted in widowhood, nay rather having held it among their delights, they refuse to persevere. We read that he also wrote to the Romans: 'The woman who is under a husband is bound to her living husband; but if he has died, she is released from the law of the husband.' Truly then, while her husband lives, she will be reckoned to commit adultery if she is made another man's; but if her husband has died, she is freed from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though made another man's. But recognize also what follows, whereby that sense which flatters you may vanish.

'And so, my brethren,' he says, 'you also are made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be made another's, namely His who rose from the dead, so that we may bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were through the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death; but now we have been made void of the law, being dead to that in which we were held, so as to serve [God] in newness of the spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.'

Therefore, if he bids us be made dead to the law through the body of Christ, which is the Church, which consists in the newness of the spirit, not through the letter of oldness, that is, of the law -- taking you away from the law, which does not bind a wife to a husband once dead, so as to prevent her being made another man's, he reduces you to the contrary condition, that you should not marry when your husband is lost; and just as you would not be reckoned an adulteress for being made another man's after your husband's death, if you still had to act under the law, so much the more, by reason of the diversity of the condition, does the condition of adultery prejudge you as one marrying another after your husband's death: because, having now to be made dead to the law, it cannot be lawful for you, since you have withdrawn from that law under which it was lawful for you. XIV.

Now if the Apostle had also permitted absolutely that one whose marriage had been lost in the faith might marry, he would have done so just as he did the other things which, against the form of his own rule, he did to suit the conditions of the times -- circumcising Timothy on account of false brethren surreptitiously brought in, and bringing certain shaven men into the temple on account of the observance of the Jews, he who chastises the Galatians for wishing to act under the law.

But circumstances so required that he should become all things to all men, that he might gain all, travailing for them until Christ should be formed in them, and warming as a nurse the little ones of the faith, teaching certain things by way of indulgence, not by way of command -- for it is one thing to indulge, another to command -- accordingly permitting a temporary license of marrying again on account of the infirmity of the flesh, just as Moses permitted divorcing on account of the hardness of heart. And here too, therefore, let us render the supplement of that sense.

For if Christ took away what Moses had commanded, because from the beginning it was not so, neither on that account will Christ be reckoned to have come from some other power; why then should not the Paraclete also have taken away what Paul indulged, because a second marriage too was not from the beginning, nor on that account be held suspect as though an alien spirit -- provided only that what is superinduced be worthy of God and of Christ? If it was worthy of God and of Christ to restrain the hardness of heart when the time was fulfilled, why should it not be more worthy of both God and Christ to shake off the infirmity of the flesh in a time now more contracted? If it is now just that a marriage be not dissolved, surely it is also honourable that it be not repeated.

In short, even in the eyes of the world each is reckoned among the goods of discipline, the one under the name of concord, the other of chastity. Hardness of heart reigned until Christ; let the infirmity of the flesh also have reigned until the Paraclete. The new law took away divorce -- it had something to take away -- and the new prophecy takes away a second marriage, which is no less a divorce of the former. But hardness of heart yielded to Christ more easily than the infirmity of the flesh; the latter defends Paul for itself more than the former defended Moses -- if indeed it defends him at all, seeing that it seizes upon him where he indulges but rejects him where he prescribes, eluding his weightier statements and his abiding wishes, which do not allow us to grant to this Apostle what he himself prefers.

And how long will this most shameless infirmity persevere in assailing the better things? Its time was until the Paraclete should work, unto whom were deferred by the Lord those things which they could not then bear; and now it befits no one to be unable to bear them, because He through whom the power to bear is given is not lacking. How long shall we plead the flesh, because the Lord said: 'The flesh is weak'? But He also premised: 'The spirit is willing,' that the spirit may conquer the flesh, that what is weak may yield to what is stronger. For He also says: 'Let him who is able to receive it, receive it' -- that is, let him who is not able depart; that rich man too departed who had not received the precept about distributing his substance to the needy, and he was dismissed to his own opinion by the Lord.

Nor on that account will hardness be imputed to Christ because of the fault of anyone's free will: 'Behold,' He says, 'I have set before you good and evil; choose that which is good.' If you cannot, because you will not -- for He shows that you can if you will, since He set both before your own choice -- it behoves you to depart from Him whose will you do not do. XV. What then is this hardness of ours, if we renounce those who do not do the will of God? What heresy, if we judge second marriages, as unlawful, to be next to adultery? For what is adultery but an unlawful marriage? The Apostle marks out those who altogether forbade marrying, who also interdicted foods which God created.

But we no more do away with marriage, if we refuse a second one, than we condemn foods if we fast more frequently. It is one thing to do away with, another to be temperate; one thing to lay down a law of not marrying, another to establish a measure of marrying. Plainly, those who reproach us with hardness or heresy in this cause -- if they so cherish the infirmity of my flesh that they think it must be indulged in marrying frequently, why do they in another cause neither indulge it nor cherish it with pardon, when it has been overcome by torments unto denial? For surely she is more capable of being excused who fell in battle than she who fell in the bedchamber, who succumbed on the rack than she who succumbed in the bed, who yielded to cruelty than she who yielded to lust, who was overcome groaning than she who was overcome in heat.

But that woman indeed they drive from communion, because she did not hold out to the end; this one, however, they receive, as though she too had held out to the end. Set forth what each of the two did not hold out to the end, and you will find her cause the more honourable who could not endure savagery rather than her who could not endure chastity. And yet the infirmity of the flesh does not excuse even a bloody defection, much less an unchaste one. XVI. But I laugh when the infirmity of the flesh is alleged, which ought to be called the height of strength. To marry again is a matter of vigour; to rise up unto the works of the flesh out of the leisure of continence is a matter of loins full of substance.

Such 'infirmity' suffices for a third and a fourth and perhaps even a seventh marriage, so that she who is the stronger the oftener she has been weaker will now have as her author not the Apostle but some Hermogenes, who was wont to marry more women than he painted. For matter abounds in that man; wherefore, presuming that the soul too consists of matter, he much the more does not have the Spirit from God, and is now not even a natural man, because he is not a natural man from the breath of God. What if someone should plead poverty, so as to profess openly that his flesh is prostituted, marrying for the sake of maintenance, forgetting that no thought is to be taken about food and clothing? He has God as the feeder even of ravens, the adorner even of flowers. What if he should point to the loneliness of his house?

As though one woman could furnish a man with a crowd, when she is nearest to flight! He has at all events a widow whom it will be permitted to take up: it is conceded to have not one wife of this kind, but now several. What if someone should think about posterity with the same mind wherewith Lot's wife had eyes, so that a man should therefore repeat marriage because he had no children by the former? A Christian, forsooth, will seek heirs -- he who is disinherited from the whole world! He has brethren, he has the Church as mother. It is another matter if they believe that even before Christ things are conducted according to the Julian laws, and think that the celibate and the childless cannot take a full inheritance from the testament of God.

Let such persons, then, marry to the very end, that in that confusion of the flesh they may be overtaken by that last exit of the world, like Sodom and Gomorrah and the days of the flood. Let them add a third saying: 'Let us eat and drink and marry, for tomorrow we shall die,' not considering that that woe upon the pregnant and the nursing will come to pass much more grievously and bitterly in the shaking of the whole world than it came to pass in the devastation of one small portion of Judea. Let them, well suited to the last times, gather the fruits of repeated marriages: flowing breasts and nauseous wombs and whimpering infants; let them make ready for Antichrist, that he may rage the more lustfully among them; he will bring to them executioner-midwives. XVII.

They will plainly have, as a fine privilege which they read to Christ, the everywhere-present weakness of the flesh. But this weakness will now be judged, not by Isaac our monogamous father, nor by any John a eunuch of Christ, nor by Judith the daughter of Merari, nor by so many other examples of the saints: heathen judges are wont to be appointed for it. The queen of Carthage shall arise and decide against Christian women -- she who, a fugitive and on foreign soil, and at that very time the foundress of so great a city, when she ought rather of her own accord to have desired the marriage of a king, yet, lest she should experience a second marriage, chose on the contrary to burn rather than to marry. Beside her too shall sit that Roman matron, who, though through nocturnal violence she had none the less experienced another man, washed away the stain of her flesh with her own blood, that she might vindicate monogamy in her own person.

There have been also those who preferred to die for their husbands rather than to marry after them. To idols too both monogamy and widowhood are apparent: to Womanly Fortune a crown is placed only by women of one husband, as also to Mother Matuta; the chief pontiff and the flamen's wife marry but once; the priestesses of Ceres are widowed even while their husbands live and consent, by a friendly separation. There are also those who may judge us concerning complete continence: the virgins of Vesta and of Achaean Juno and of Scythian Diana and of Pythian Apollo; even the attendants of that Egyptian bull will judge the infirmity of the Christians concerning continence. Blush, O flesh, that hast put on Christ! Let it suffice thee to marry once, unto which thou wast made from the beginning, unto which thou art recalled at the end.

Return to the earlier Adam, if you cannot to the last; once did he taste of the tree, once did he lust, once did he cover his shameful parts, once did he blush before God, once did he hide his blush, once was he exiled from the paradise of holiness, once thereafter did he marry. If you were in him, you have your pattern; if you have passed over into Christ, you ought to be better. Show yourself a third Adam, and him a bigamist, and then you will be able to be that which between the two you cannot be. (Scanned by Roger Pearse, Ipswich, 2003.)