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Part Fourth
Further reasons for marriage which men allege for themselves arise from anxiety for posterity, and the bitter, bitter pleasure of children. To us this is idle. For why should we be eager to bear children, whom, when we have them, we desire to send before us (to glory)[388] (in respect, I mean, of the distresses that are now imminent); desirous as we are ourselves, too, to be taken out of this most wicked world,[389] and received into the Lord’s presence, which was the desire even of an apostle?[390] To the servant of God, forsooth, offspring is necessary! For of our own salvation we are secure enough, so that we have leisure for children! Burdens must be sought by us for ourselves which are avoided even by the majority of the Gentiles, who are compelled by laws,[391] who are decimated[392] by abortions;[393] burdens which, finally, are to us most of all unsuitable, as being perilous to faith! For why did the Lord foretell a “woe to them that are with child, and them that give suck,”[394] except because He testifies that in that day of disencumbrance the encumbrances of children will be an inconvenience? It is to marriage, of course, that those encumbrances appertain; but that (“woe”) will not pertain to widows. (They) at the first trump of the angel will spring forth disencumbered—will freely bear to the end whatsoever pressure and persecution, with no burdensome fruit of marriage heaving in the womb, none in the bosom.
Therefore, whether it be for the sake of the flesh, or of the world,[395] or of posterity, that marriage is undertaken, nothing of all these “necessities” affects the servants of God, so as to prevent my deeming it enough to have once for all yielded to some one of them, and by one marriage appeased[396] all concupiscence of this kind. Let us marry daily, and in the midst of our marrying let us be overtaken, like Sodom and Gomorrah, by that day of fear![397] For there it was not only, of course, that they were dealing in marriage and merchandise; but when He says, “They were marrying and buying,” He sets a brand[398] upon the very leading vices of the flesh and of the world,[399] which call men off the most from divine disciplines—the one through the pleasure of rioting, the other though the greed of acquiring. And yet that “blindness” then was felt long before “the ends of the world.”[400] What, then, will the case be if God now keep us from the vices which of old were detestable before Him? “The time,” says (the apostle), “is compressed.[401] It remaineth that they who have wives[402] act as if they had them not.”
But if they who have (wives) are (thus) bound to consign to oblivion what they have, how much more are they who have not, prohibited from seeking a second time what they no longer have; so that she whose husband has departed from the world should thenceforward impose rest on her sex by abstinence from marriage—abstinence which numbers of Gentile women devote to the memory of beloved husbands! When anything seems difficult, let us survey others who cope with still greater difficulties. How many are there who from the moment of their baptism set the seal (of virginity) upon their flesh? How many, again, who by equal mutual consent cancel the debt of matrimony—voluntary eunuchs[403] for the sake of their desire after the celestial kingdom! But if, while the marriage-tie is still intact, abstinence is endured, how much more when it has been undone! For I believe it to be harder for what is intact to be quite forsaken, than for what has been lost not to be yearned after. A hard and arduous thing enough, surely, is the continence for God’s sake of a holy woman after her husband’s decease, when Gentiles,[404] in honour of their own Satan, endure sacerdotal offices which involve both virginity and widowhood![405] At Rome, for instance, they who have to do with the type of that “inextinguishable fire,”[406] keeping watch over the omens of their own (future) penalty, in company with the (old) dragon[407] himself, are appointed on the ground of virginity. To the Achæan Juno, at the town Ægium, a virgin is allotted; and the (priestesses) who rave at Delphi know not marriage. Moreover, we know that widows minister to the African Ceres; enticed away, indeed, from matrimony by a most stem oblivion: for not only do they withdraw from their still living husbands, but they even introduce other wives to them in their own room—the husbands, of course, smiling on it—all contact (with males), even as far as the kiss of their sons, being forbidden them; and yet, with enduring practice, they persevere in such a discipline of widowhood, which excludes the solace even of holy affection.[408] These precepts has the devil given to his servants, and he is heard! He challenges, forsooth, God’s servants, by the continence of his own, as if on equal terms! Continent are even the priests of hell![409] For he has found a way to ruin men even in good pursuits; and with him it makes no difference to slay some by voluptuousness, some by continence.
To us continence has been pointed out by the Lord of salvation as an instrument for attaining eternity,[410] and as a testimony of (our) faith; as a commendation of this flesh of ours, which is to be sustained for the “garment of immortality,”[411] which is one day to supervene; for enduring, in fine, the will of God. Besides, reflect, I advise you, that there is no one who is taken out of the world[412] but by the will of God, if, (as is the case,) not even a leaf falls from off a tree without it. The same who brings us into the world[413] must of necessity take us out of it too. Therefore when, through the will of God, the husband is deceased, the marriage likewise, by the will of God, deceases. Why should you restore what God has put an end to? Why do you, by repeating the servitude of matrimony, spurn the liberty which is offered you? “You have been bound to a wife,”[414] says the apostle; “seek not loosing. You have been loosed from a wife;[415] seek not binding.” For even if you do not “sin” in re-marrying, still he says “pressure of the flesh ensues.”[416] Wherefore, so far as we can, let us love the opportunity of continence; as soon as it offers itself, let us resolve to accept it, that what we have not had strength[417] (to follow) in matrimony we may follow in widowhood. The occasion must be embraced which puts an end to that which necessity[418] commanded. How detrimental to faith, how obstructive to holiness, second marriages are, the discipline of the Church and the prescription of the apostle declare, when he suffers not men twice married to preside (over a Church[419]), when he would not grant a widow admittance into the order unless she had been “the wife of one man;”[420] for it behoves God’s altar[421] to be set forth pure. That whole halo[422] which encircles the Church is represented (as consisting) of holiness. Priesthood is (a function) of widowhood and of celibacies among the nations. Of course (this is) in conformity with the devil’s principle of rivalry. For the king of heathendom,[423] the chief pontiff,[424] to marry a second time is unlawful. How pleasing must holiness be to God, when even His enemy affects it!—not, of course, as having any affinity with anything good, but as contumeliously affecting what is pleasing to[425] God the Lord.
For, concerning the honours which widowhood enjoys in the sight of God, there is a brief summary in one saying of His through the prophet: “Do thou[426] justly to the widow and to the orphan; and come ye,[427] let us reason, saith the Lord.” These two names, left to the care of the divine mercy, in proportion as they are destitute of human aid, the Father of all undertakes to defend. Look how the widow’s benefactor is put on a level with the widow herself, whose champion shall “reason with the Lord!” Not to virgins, I take it, is so great a gift given. Although in their case perfect integrity and entire sanctity shall have the nearest vision of the face of God, yet the widow has a task more toilsome, because it is easy not to crave after that which you know not, and to turn away from what you have never had to regret.[428] More glorious is the continence which is aware of its own right, which knows what it has seen. The virgin may possibly be held the happier, but the widow the more hardly tasked; the former in that she has always kept “the good,”[429] the latter in that she has found “the good for herself.” In the former it is grace, in the latter virtue, that is crowned. For some things there are which are of the divine liberality, some of our own working. The indulgences granted by the Lord are regulated by their own grace; the things which are objects of man’s striving are attained by earnest pursuit. Pursue earnestly, therefore, the virtue of continence, which is modesty’s agent; industry, which allows not women to be “wanderers;”[430] frugality, which scorns the world.[431] Follow companies and conversations worthy of God, mindful of that short verse, sanctified by the apostle’s quotation of it, “Ill interviews good morals do corrupt.”[432] Talkative, idle, winebibbing, curious tent-fellows,[433] do the very greatest hurt to the purpose of widow-hood. Through talkativeness there creep in words unfriendly to modesty; through idleness they seduce one from strictness; through winebibbing they insinuate any and every evil; through curiosity they convey a spirit of rivalry in lust. Not one of such women knows how to speak of the good of single-husbandhood; for their “god,” as the apostle says, “is their belly;”[434] and so, too, what is neighbour to the belly.
These considerations, dearest fellow-servant, I commend to you thus early,[435] handled throughout superfluously indeed, after the apostle, but likely to prove a solace to you, in that (if so it shall turn out[436]) you will cherish my memory in them.
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