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Part Fourth
[Translated by the Rev. S. Thelwall.]
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I have thought it meet, my best beloved fellow-servant in the Lord, even from this early period,[338] to provide for the course which you must pursue after my departure from the world,[339] if I shall be called before you; (and) to entrust to your honour[340] the observance of the provision. For in things worldly[341] we are active enough, and we wish the good of each of us to be consulted. If we draw up wills for such matters, why ought we not much more to take forethought for our posterity[342] in things divine and heavenly, and in a sense to bequeath a legacy to be received before the inheritance be divided,—(the legacy, I mean, of) admonition and demonstration touching those (bequests) which are allotted[343] out of (our) immortal goods, and from the heritage of the heavens? Only, that you may be able to receive in its entirety[344] this feoffment in trust[345] of my admonition, may God grant; to whom be honour, glory, renown, dignity, and power, now and to the ages of the ages!
The precept, therefore, which I give you is, that, with all the constancy you may, you do, after our departure, renounce nuptials; not that you will on that score confer any benefit on me, except in that you will profit yourself. But to Christians, after their departure from the world,[346] no restoration of marriage is promised in the day of the resurrection, translated as they will be into the condition and sanctity of angels.[347] Therefore no solicitude arising from carnal jealousy will, in the day of the resurrection, even in the case of her whom they chose to represent as having been married to seven brothers successively, wound any one[348] of her so many husbands; nor is any (husband) awaiting her to put her to confusion.[349] The question raised by the Sadducees has yielded to the Lord’s sentence. Think not that it is for the sake of preserving to the end for myself the entire devotion of your flesh, that I, suspicious of the pain of (anticipated) slight, am even at this early period[350] instilling into you the counsel of (perpetual) widowhood. There will at that day be no resumption of voluptuous disgrace between us. No such frivolities, no such impurities, does God promise to His (servants). But whether to you, or to any other woman whatever who pertains to God, the advice which we are giving shall be profitable, we take leave to treat of at large.
We do not indeed forbid the union of man and woman, blest by God as the seminary of the human race, and devised for the replenishment of the earth[351] and the furnishing of the world,[352] and therefore permitted, yet singly. For Adam was the one husband of Eve, and Eve his one wife, one woman, one rib.[353] We grant,[354] that among our ancestors, and the patriarchs themselves, it was lawful[355] not only to marry, but even to multiply wives.[356] There were concubines, too, (in those days.) But although the Church did come in figuratively in the synagogue, yet (to interpret simply) it was necessary to institute (certain things) which should afterward deserve to be either lopped off or modified. For the Law was (in due time) to supervene. (Nor was that enough:) for it was meet that causes for making up the deficiencies of the Law should have forerun (Him who was to supply those deficiencies). And so to the Law presently had to succeed the Word[357] of God introducing the spiritual circumcision.[358] Therefore, by means of the wide licence of those days, materials for subsequent emendations were furnished beforehand, of which materials the Lord by His Gospel, and then the apostle in the last days of the (Jewish) age,[359] either cut off the redundancies or regulated the disorders.
But let it not be thought that my reason for premising thus much concerning the liberty granted to the old, and the restraint imposed on the later time, is that I may lay a foundation for teaching that Christ’s advent was intended to dissolve wedlock, (and) to abolish marriage talons; as if from this period onward[360] I were prescribing an end to marrying. Let them see to that, who, among the rest of their perversities, teach the disjoining of the “one flesh in twain;”[361] denying Him who, after borrowing the female from the male, recombined between themselves, in the matrimonial computation, the two bodies taken out of the consortship of the self-same material substance. In short, there is no place at all where we read that nuptials are prohibited; of course on the ground that they are “a good thing.” What, however, is better than this “good,” we learn from the apostle, who permits marrying indeed, but prefers abstinence; the former on account of the insidiousnesses of temptations, the latter on account of the straits of the times.[362] Now, by looking into the reason thus given for each proposition, it is easily discerned that the ground on which the power of marrying is conceded is necessity; but whatever necessity grants, she by her very nature depreciates. In fact, in that it is written, “To marry is better than to burn,” what, pray, is the nature of this “good” which is (only) commended by comparison with “evil,” so that the reason why “marrying” is more good is (merely) that “burning” is less? Nay, but how far better is it neither to marry nor to burn? Why, even in persecutions it is better to take advantage of the permission granted, and “flee from town to town,”[363] than, when apprehended and racked, to deny (the faith).[364] And therefore more blessed are they who have strength to depart (this life) in blessed confession of their testimony.[365] I may say, What is permitted is not good. For how stands the case? I must of necessity die (if I be apprehended and confess my faith.) If I think (that fate) deplorable, (then flight) is good; but if I have a fear of the thing which is permitted, (the permitted thing) has some suspicion attaching to the cause of its permission. But that which is “better” no one (ever) “permitted,” as being undoubted, and manifest by its own inherent purity. There are some things which are not to be desired merely because they are not forbidden, albeit they are in a certain sense forbidden when other things are preferred to them; for the preference given to the higher things is a dissuasion from the lowest. A thing is not “good” merely because it is not “evil,” nor is it “evil” merely because it is not “harmful.”[366] Further: that which is fully “good” excels on this ground, that it is not only not harmful, but profitable into the bargain. For you are bound to prefer what is profitable to what is (merely) not harmful. For the first place is what every struggle aims at; the second has consolation attaching to it, but not victory. But if we listen to the apostle, forgetting what is behind, let us both strain after what is before,[367] and be followers after the better rewards. Thus, albeit he does not “cast a snare[368] upon us,” he points out what tends to utility when he says, “The unmarried woman thinks on the things of the Lord, that both in body and spirit she may be holy; but the married is solicitous how to please her husband.”[369] But he nowhere permits marriage in such a way as not rather to wish us to do our utmost in imitation of his own example. Happy the man who shall prove like Paul!
But we read “that the flesh is weak;”[370] and hence we soothe[371] ourselves in some cases. Yet we read, too, that “the spirit is strong;”[372] for each clause occurs in one and the same sentence. Flesh is an earthly, spirit a heavenly, material. Why, then, do we, too prone to self-excuse, put forward (in our defence) the weak part of us, but not look at[373] the strong? Why should not the earthly yield to the heavenly? If the spirit is stronger than the flesh, because it is withal of nobler origin, it is our own fault if we follow the weaker. Now there are two phases[374] of human weakness which make marriages[375] necessary to such as are disjoined from matrimony. The first and most powerful is that which arises from fleshly concupiscence; the second, from worldly concupiscence. But by us, who are servants of God, who renounce both voluptuousness and ambition, each is to be repudiated. Fleshly concupiscence claims the functions of adult age, craves after beauty’s harvest, rejoices in its own shame, pleads the necessity of a husband to the female sex, as a source of authority and of comfort, or to render it safe from evil rumours. To meet these its counsels, do you apply the examples of sisters of ours whose names are with the Lord,[376]—who, when their husbands have preceded them (to glory), give to no opportunity of beauty or of age the precedence over holiness. They prefer to be wedded to God. To God their beauty, to God their youth (is dedicated). With Him they live; with Him they converse; Him they “handle”[377] by day and by night; to the Lord they assign their prayers as dowries; from Him, as oft as they desire it, they receive His approbation[378] as dotal gifts. Thus they have laid hold for themselves of an eternal gift of the Lord; and while on earth, by abstaining from marriage, are already counted as belonging to the angelic family. Training yourself to an emulation of (their) constancy by the examples of such women, you will by spiritual affection bury that fleshly concupiscence, in abolishing the temporal[379] and fleeting desires of beauty and youth by the compensating gain of immortal blessings.
On the other hand, this worldly concupiscence (to which I referred) has, as its causes, glory, cupidity, ambition, want of sufficiency; through which causes it trumps up the “necessity” for marrying,—promising itself, forsooth, heavenly things in return—to lord it, (namely,) in another’s family; to roost[380] on another’s wealth; to extort splendour from another’s store to lavish expenditure[381] which you do not feel! Far be all this from believers, who have no care about maintenance, unless it be that we distrust the promises of God, and (His) care and providence, who clothes with such grace the lilies of the field;[382] who, without any labour on their part, feeds the fowls of the heaven;[383] who prohibits care to be taken about to-morrow’s food and clothing,[384] promising that He knows what is needful for each of His servants—not indeed ponderous necklaces, not burdensome garments, not Gallic mules nor German bearers, which all add lustre to the glory of nuptials; but “sufficiency,”[385] which is suitable to moderation and modesty. Presume, I pray you, that you have need of nothing if you “attend upon the Lord;”[386] nay, that you have all things, if you have the Lord, whose are all things. Think often[387] on things heavenly, and you will despise things earthly. To widowhood signed and sealed before the Lord nought is necessary but perseverance.
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