Exhortation to Chastity

How modest indeed is that saying: The Lord gave, the Lord has taken away, as it seemed good to the Lord, so it has been done: and therefore if we restore the marriage that has been taken away, we are without doubt striving against the will of God, wishing to have again what He did not wish us to have. For if He had wished it, He would not have taken it away. Unless we also interpret this as the will of God, as though He wished us again to have what He had already not wished. It is not of good and solid faith to refer all things thus to the will of God, and for each person to flatter himself by saying that nothing happens without His nod, so that we do not understand that there is something in ourselves.

Otherwise, every sin will be excused, if we contend that nothing happens in us without the will of God; and that definition will go to the destruction of all discipline, even of God Himself, if either He produces from His own will things which He does not will, or there is nothing which God does not will. But how does He forbid certain things, with which He also threatens eternal punishment? For surely what He forbids He does not will, by which He is also offended: just as also what He wills, He commands, and accepts, and repays with the reward of eternity. And so since from His commandments we have learned both what He wills and what He does not will; yet we have the will and the choice of selecting either, as it is written: Behold, I have set before you good and evil, for you have tasted of the tree of knowledge.

And therefore we ought not to refer to the will of God what is exposed to our own free choice, whom He Himself wills also to will, who does not will evil. Thus the will is ours when we will evil against the will of God, who wills good. Furthermore, if you ask whence comes that will by which we will something against the will of God, I will say: from ourselves. And not without reason; for you must answer for your own seed: since that first prince both of the race and of sin, Adam, willed what he did wrong. For the devil did not impose upon him the will of sinning, but supplied material to the will. Otherwise, the will of God had come into obedience.

Likewise you also, if you do not obey God, who established you, by setting forth a commandment, as a being of free power, through the freedom of will, willing, you will turn aside into that which God does not will, and thus you think yourself subverted by the devil, who, even if he wills you to will what God does not will, does not however cause you also to will it; because neither at that time did he subdue those first-formed ones to the will of sin; nay, not even unwilling, nor ignorant of what God did not will; for surely He did not will it to be done, since upon its commission He appointed death. Thus the devil's one work is to tempt what is in you, whether you will. But when you have willed, it follows that he subjects you to himself, not having wrought in you the will, but having seized the occasion of the will.

Therefore since the only thing in us is to will, and in this our mind toward God is proved, whether we will those things which accord with His own will.

I say that the will of God must be examined deeply and carefully, as to what He wills even in secret. For what He wills openly, we all know; and how those very things are in the open, must be considered. For even if certain things seem to savor of the will of God, while they are permitted by God, not everything that is permitted straightway proceeds from His pure and entire will. Whatever is permitted is from indulgence; which, even if it is not without will, yet because it has some cause in him to whom the indulgence is granted, comes as it were from an unwilling will, having suffered the cause of itself, which compels the will. See what kind of will that is, of which another is the cause. The second kind also to be considered is that of not pure will. God wills us to do certain things pleasing to Him, in which indulgence does not serve as patron, but discipline holds sway.

If however He has set other things before these, surely those which He wills more—is it doubtful that we must pursue those which He wills more; since those which He wills less, because He wills others more, are to be held as though He did not will them? For by showing what He wills more, He has cancelled the lesser will by the greater. And to the extent that He has set both before your knowledge, He has determined that you ought to pursue that which He has declared He wills more. Therefore if He has declared it in order that you may pursue what He wills more, without doubt unless you do so you think contrary to His will, thinking contrary to His more prevailing will; and you offend more than you merit, by doing what He wills and rejecting what He wills more. In part you sin; in part, if you do not sin, you nevertheless do not merit. Moreover, to be unwilling to merit is also to sin.

Therefore if the second marriage is from that will of God which is called indulgence, we shall deny it to be the pure will, of which indulgence is the cause; if it is from that will to which another more prevailing will of continence more to be sought is set before it, we shall have learned that the more prevailing is not cancelled by the more prevailing. These things I have briefly touched upon, so that I may now run through the words of the Apostle. But first I shall not seem irreverent if I observe what he himself professes; that all that indulgence of marriages he introduced from his own, that is, from human sense, not from divine precept. For even when he determined concerning widows and the unmarried that they should marry if they cannot contain themselves, because it is better to marry than to burn; turning to the other kind he says: But to those who are married I declare, not I indeed, but the Lord.

Thus he shows, by the transfer of his own person to the Lord, that what he had said above he pronounced not from the Lord's person but from his own: It is better to marry than to burn. Which saying, although it pertains to those who are found by faith to be unmarried or widowed; yet because all embrace it as a license for marrying, I would like to examine, what kind of good he shows, which is better than a punishment: which cannot be seen as good except when compared to something worst; so that marriage is good for this reason, because it is worse to burn. A thing is good in this way, if it persists in holding the name without comparison, I do not say with evil, but even with another good; so that even if it is compared to another good and overshadowed by another, it nonetheless remains in the name of good.

But if through the condition of evil it is compelled to be called good, it is not so much good as a kind of lesser evil, which, obscured by a greater evil, is driven to the name of good. Take away then the condition of comparison, so that you do not say: it is better to marry than to burn; and I ask whether you dare to say: it is better to marry; not adding what it is that is better. Therefore what is not better is certainly not good either; because you have taken away and removed the condition of comparison, which, while it makes that thing better, thus compels it to be held as good. It is better to marry than to burn; this is to be understood in the same way as: it is better to have one eye than to lack two: yet if you depart from the comparison, it will not be better to have one eye, because it is not even good.

Let no one therefore seek from this passage a defense, which properly pertains to the unmarried and widowed, for whom no union has yet been counted. Although I have shown that even for them the condition of what is permitted must be understood.

Furthermore, concerning the second marriage we know plainly that the Apostle has pronounced: You are loosed from a wife, do not seek a wife: but if you have taken one, you do not sin. Yet likewise he introduces the order of this saying also from his own counsel, not from divine precept. I have no commandment of the Lord, he says; but I give counsel, as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord to be faithful. Moreover, neither in the Gospel nor in the Epistles of Paul himself will you find the separation of marriage permitted by the precept of God. Whence it is confirmed that one marriage is to be held; because what is not found to be permitted by the Lord is forgiven.

Add that this very interposition of human counsel, as though having now reconsidered its own excess, immediately restrains and recalls itself, when he subjoins: Nevertheless such persons will have tribulation of the flesh; when he says he spares them; when he adds that the time is gathered together, in which it is fitting that even those who have marriages should act as though they had none: when he compares the anxieties of the married and the unmarried. For by these things, teaching why it is not expedient to marry, he dissuades from that which he had above indulged. And this concerning the first marriage; how much more concerning the second? But when he exhorts us to his own example, surely showing what he wishes us to be, that is continent, he equally declares what he does not wish us to be, that is incontinent. Thus he also, when he wills one thing, does not permit what he does not will either willingly or in truth.

For if he had willed it, he would not have permitted it, nay he would have commanded it. But behold again, he says that a woman whose husband has died may marry, if she wishes, only in the Lord. But she will be happier, he says, if she remains thus according to my counsel. But I think that I also have the Spirit of God. We see two counsels, by one of which above he grants permission to marry, and by which afterward he enjoins continence from marrying. To which then, you ask, shall we give assent? Look and read. When he grants permission, he adduces the counsel of a prudent man. When he enjoins continence, he affirms the counsel of the Holy Spirit. Follow the admonition to which divinity lends its patronage.

The faithful indeed also have the Spirit of God, but not all the faithful are Apostles. Therefore when he who had called himself faithful afterward added that he has the Spirit of God, which no one would doubt even of a faithful person; he said this for this reason, that he might restore to himself the dignity of an Apostle. For properly the Apostles have the Holy Spirit in the works of prophecy and the efficacy of powers, and the evidences of tongues, not in part, as the rest. Thus he caused the authority of the Holy Spirit to approach that kind to which he wished us to give greater obedience; and it has now become not the counsel of the divine Spirit, but, in accordance with His majesty, a commandment.

To direct the law of marrying but once, the very origin of the human race pleads as advocate, bearing witness to what God established in the beginning, to be reviewed as a pattern for posterity. For when He had fashioned man, and had provided for him a necessary equal, borrowing one of his ribs, He formed for him one woman; when assuredly neither the craftsman nor the material had failed—there were more ribs in Adam, and God's hands are untiring—but there were not more wives in God's design, and therefore Adam, the man of God, and Eve, the woman of God, were hallowed by a single marriage with each other. They established for mankind the pattern of God, by the authority of their origin and by God's first will. Finally, He said: they shall be two in one flesh; not three, nor four. Otherwise it is no longer one flesh, nor two in one flesh. They shall be thus, if the joining and union into oneness takes place but once.

But if rarely or more often, it has already ceased to be one; and they will be not two in one flesh, but plainly one rib distributed among many. But that which the Apostle interprets as referring to the Church and Christ—they shall be two in one flesh—according to the spiritual marriage of the Church and Christ (for Christ is one, and His Church is one), we ought to recognize as doubling and reinforcing for us the law of a single marriage, both according to the foundation of the race and according to the sacrament of Christ. We are reckoned under one marriage in both respects, carnally in Adam and spiritually in Christ. The one precept of monogamy belongs to both nativities. In both he degenerates who departs from monogamy. The plurality of marriages began with a cursed man. Lamech was the first, married to two wives, making three into one flesh.

But even the blessed Patriarchs, you say, mingled marriages not only with several wives but also with concubines. Therefore will it also be lawful for us to marry without number? Certainly it will be lawful, if there still remain sacraments of some future type, which your marriages are to prefigure; or if even now there is still room for that voice: increase and multiply, that is, if no other voice has yet supervened—that the time is now gathered in, and it remains that even those who have wives should act as though they had none; for surely, by enjoining continence and restraining intercourse, the seedbed of the race, He has abolished that increase and multiply.

In my opinion, however, both pronouncements and dispositions belong to one and the same God: who at that time in the beginning released the seed of the race, with the reins of marriage loosened, until the world should be filled, until the material of the new discipline should grow; but now, at the extremities of the times, has compressed what He had released, and recalled what He had indulged—not without reason for the extension at the beginning and the pruning at the end. Beginnings are always relaxed, ends are contracted. For this reason someone plants a forest and allows it to grow, so that he may cut it in its season. The forest will be the old dispensation, which is reckoned against the new Gospel, in which also the axe is laid at the roots of the tree. So too eye for eye and tooth for tooth has now grown old, since it became young again that no one should render evil for evil.

I think moreover that even in human constitutions and decrees, later ones prevail over earlier ones.

But why should we not rather recognize from the ancient examples those things which are in agreement with later ones, and transmit from the discipline and form of antiquity to the new? For behold, in the old law I observe that the license of marrying more often was curtailed. It was provided in Leviticus: My priests shall not marry more than once. I can say that even what is once is more than nothing. What is not one is a number. Finally, after one, number begins. But one is everything that is but once. Yet it was reserved for Christ, as in other things, so also in this, to fulfill the law. Hence therefore among us it is more fully and more explicitly prescribed that those who are chosen for the priestly order must be men of one marriage. So much so that I recall certain digamists being removed from their position. But you will say: Therefore it is lawful for the rest whom it excepts.

We shall be vain if we suppose that what is not lawful for priests is lawful for laymen. Are we not also laymen priests? It is written: He has made us also a kingdom and priests to God and His Father. The authority of the Church has established the difference between the order and the people, and the honor sanctified by the assembly of the order. So where there is no assembly of the ecclesiastical order, you both offer and baptize and are a priest to yourself alone. But where three are gathered, there is a Church, even if they are laymen. For each one lives by his own faith, nor is there respect of persons with God; since it is not the hearers of the law who are justified by God, but the doers, as the Apostle also says. Therefore if you have the right of a priest in yourself, where it is necessary; you ought also to have the discipline of a priest, where it is necessary to have the right of a priest. Does a digamist baptize?

Does a digamist offer? How much more is it a capital matter for a lay digamist to act in the place of a priest. When from the priest himself, once made a digamist, the right to act as priest is taken away! But necessity, you say, is indulged. No necessity is excused which can cease to exist. Simply take care not to be found a digamist, and you do not put yourself in the necessity of administering what is not lawful for a digamist. God wills all of us to be so disposed that we may everywhere be fit for the performance of His sacraments. One God, one faith, one discipline also. So much so that, unless laymen also observe those things by which presbyters are chosen, how shall there be presbyters, who are chosen from among laymen? Therefore we ought to strive that the layman be first commanded to abstain from a second marriage, since a presbyter can be none other than a layman who has been a husband but once.

Let it be lawful to marry again, if everything that is lawful is good. The same Apostle exclaims: all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. What is not profitable, I ask you, can it be called good? If things that are not for salvation are also lawful, then things that are not good are also lawful. But what ought you to prefer more: that which is therefore good because it is lawful, or that which is so because it is profitable? I consider there to be a great difference between what is permitted and what is salutary. Of a good thing it is not said, it is lawful, because a good thing does not wait to be permitted, but to be embraced. But that is permitted concerning which it is in doubt whether it is good, which can also not be permitted, if it has no primary cause of its own.

It is permitted to marry a second time on account of the danger of incontinence; because unless the license of something not good were present, there would be no occasion to prove who defers to the divine will and who to his own power; which of us pursues present advantage, and which seizes the occasion of license. License is often a test of discipline, since discipline is proved through testing, and testing operates through license. Thus it comes about that all things are lawful, but not all things are expedient; while he to whom it is permitted is tested, and is judged while he is tested in the permission. It was also lawful for the Apostles to marry and to lead wives about; it was also lawful to be supported by the Gospel. But he who did not use this right as an occasion, calls us to his own example, teaching that the proof lies in that wherein license has laid the groundwork for the testing of abstinence.

If we interpret his meaning thoroughly, a second marriage will have to be called nothing other than a form of fornication. For since he says that husbands have this anxiety, how they may please their wives; not surely as regards character (for he would not disparage a good anxiety); but he would have them understood to be anxious about dress and adornment and every pursuit of appearance, to stir up allurements; but to please by appearance and adornment is the nature of carnal concupiscence, which is also the cause of fornication: does it not seem to you that a second marriage is akin to fornication, since I find in it those things that belong to fornication? The Lord Himself says: Whoever looks at a woman to lust after her has already committed fornication with her in his heart. But he who looks at her with a view to marrying her, has he done less or more? What if he has also married her?

Which he would not do, unless he had also lusted to marry her, and had looked in order to lust. Unless indeed a wife can be married whom you have neither seen nor desired. There is certainly a great difference between whether a husband or a bachelor lusts after another woman. Every woman is also another to a bachelor, so long as she belongs to another; yet she does not become a wife except by the same means by which she becomes an adulteress. The laws seem to make a distinction between marriage and fornication by the diversity of what is illicit, not by the nature of the thing itself. Otherwise, what thing is present in all men and women alike for both marriage and fornication? The mingling of flesh, of course, the desire for which the Lord equated with fornication. Therefore, you say, you are now destroying even first, that is, single marriages. And not without reason, since these too consist of that which fornication also consists of.

Therefore the best thing for a man is not to touch a woman, and therefore the primary sanctity of virginity, because it lacks affinity with fornication. And since these arguments can be advanced even from first and single marriages as a cause for continence, how much more will they prejudge the case for refusing a second marriage! Be grateful if God has indulged you in marrying once; but you will be grateful if you do not know that He has indulged you a second time. Otherwise you abuse the indulgence when you use it without moderation. Moderation is understood from the word measure. It is not enough for you to have fallen from that highest rank of immaculate virginity into the second by marrying; but you sink further into a third, and into a fourth, and perhaps into more, after you have not been continent at the second station: because he who hesitated to encourage second marriages did not wish to prohibit multiple marriages.

Let us therefore marry daily, and be found marrying on the last day as Sodom and Gomorrah: on which day that Woe upon those with child shall be fulfilled, that is, upon husbands and the incontinent: for from marriages come wombs, and breasts, and infants. And when is there an end of marrying? I believe after the end of living.

Let us renounce carnal things, that we may at some time attend to spiritual things. Seize the opportunity, even if not the most desired, yet an opportune one: not to have one to whom you owe the debt, and from whom you are released: you have ceased to be a debtor. O how happy you are! You have dismissed your debtor; bear the loss. What if you find that what we called a loss is a gain? For through continence you will trade in a great substance of holiness; by sparing the flesh, you will acquire the spirit. Let us reflect upon our very own conscience, how differently a man feels within himself: when he happens to abstain from his wife, he has spiritual understanding. If he makes prayer to the Lord, he is near to heaven. If he applies himself to the Scriptures, he is wholly there. If he sings a psalm, he is pleased with himself. If he adjures a demon, he has confidence in himself.

Therefore the Apostle added a temporary purification for the sake of commending prayers; so that we might know that what is profitable for a time ought always to be practiced by us, so that it may always be profitable. Daily, indeed at every moment, prayer is necessary for men, and therefore continence also, since prayer is necessary. Prayer proceeds from conscience. If conscience is ashamed, prayer is ashamed. The Spirit leads prayer to God. If the spirit is guilty before itself of a blushing conscience, how will it dare to lead prayer from that source, from which, when it blushes, even the holy minister is suffused with shame? For there is also the prophetic voice of the Old Testament: You shall be holy, because God is holy; and again: With the holy you shall be sanctified, and with the innocent man you shall be innocent, and with the chosen you shall be chosen. For we ought to enter into the discipline of the Lord in a manner worthy of it, not according to the burning desires of the flesh.

For so also the Apostle says that to be minded according to the flesh is death; but to be minded according to the spirit is life eternal in Christ Jesus our Lord. If this obscuring, even when the matter of the flesh is exercised in a single marriage, turns away the Holy Spirit, how much more when it is carried on in a second marriage?

For the shame is twofold; because in a second marriage two wives surround the same husband; one in spirit, the other in the flesh: for you will not be able to hate the former, for whom you preserve an even more devout affection, as one now received with the Lord, for whose spirit you pray, for whom you render annual offerings. Will you therefore stand before the Lord with as many wives as you commemorate in prayer? And will you offer for two? And will you commend those two through a priest ordained from monogamy, or even one hallowed from virginity, surrounded by virgins and women married but once, and will your sacrifice ascend with a free countenance? And among the other petitions of a good mind, will you ask for chastity for yourself and your wife?

I know with what pretexts we color the insatiable desire of the flesh: we put forward the necessities of supports, a house to be managed, a household to be governed, purses and keys to be kept, wool-work to be dispensed, food to be procured, domestic cares. Forsooth, only the houses of married men fare well. The households of the unmarried have perished, the affairs of eunuchs, the fortunes of soldiers or of those who travel without wives. For are we not also soldiers? And indeed of a greater discipline, inasmuch as we serve so great a commander. Are we not also sojourners in this world? But why, O Christian, are you so disposed that you cannot be without a wife? Now too a partner in domestic burdens is necessary. Have some spiritual wife; take one from among the widows, one beautiful in faith, dowered with poverty, sealed by age: you will have made a good marriage. Wives of this sort it is pleasing to God to have even in greater number.

But Christians think of posterity, they for whom there is no tomorrow. Will a servant of God desire heirs, who has disinherited himself from the world? And for this reason, why should anyone seek marriage again, if from a former one he has no children? He will therefore have this first consequence, that he will wish to live longer, while the apostle himself hastens to the Lord? Certainly he will be most unencumbered in persecutions, most steadfast in martyrdoms, most prompt in acts of charity, most temperate in acquisitions: and finally he will die without anxiety, having left behind children who will perhaps perform the funeral rites for him. Are these things then also done out of regard for the commonwealth, lest cities fail if offspring are not raised up: lest laws, rights, and commerce decay; lest temples be abandoned; lest there be none to cry out: Christians to the beasts. For those who seek children desire to hear these things.

Let even these considerations suffice for the counsel of widowhood, especially among us—the importunity of children, to receive whom men are compelled by laws; because every wise man would never willingly have desired children. What then will you do if you have filled a new wife from your own conscience? Will you dissolve the conception with drugs? I think it is no more lawful for us to destroy one being born than one already born. But perhaps at that time, when your wife is pregnant, you will dare to seek from God a remedy for so great an anxiety, which when it lay in your own power you refused. Some barren woman, I suppose, will be sought out, already of a rather cooler age. Prudent enough, and above all faithful. For we believe that no woman is barren or aged by God's will; which can all the more come to pass if anyone, by presuming upon this foresight of his own, has provoked the jealousy of God.

We know, finally, that a certain one of the brethren, when he had sought a barren wife for a second marriage on account of his daughter, became a father a second time just as he became a husband a second time.

To this my exhortation, most beloved brother, there are added also secular examples, which are often set before us even as testimony, when something good and pleasing to God is recognized even by outsiders, and is burdened with testimony. Finally, monogamy among the pagans is held in such high honor that even for virgins lawfully marrying a univira is employed as the pronuba; and if it is for the sake of an omen, it is at any rate a good omen. Likewise, that in certain solemn rites and offices, the first place belongs to the univira. Certainly the flaminica is none but a univira, which is also the law of the flamen. For since not even the pontifex maximus himself is permitted to repeat marriage, it is assuredly the glory of monogamy: but when Satan covets the sacraments of God, it is a provocation to us; nay rather a cause of shame, if we are sluggish in exhibiting to God that continence which certain persons render to the devil, now by virginity, now by perpetual widowhood.

We know the virgins of Vesta and of Juno in a town of Achaia, of Apollo at Ephesus, and of Minerva in certain places. We know also continent men, and indeed the priests of that Egyptian bull. And women devoted to the African Ceres; to whom they even grow old having voluntarily renounced marriage, thereafter shunning the touch of males, even to the kisses of their sons. The devil has found, it seems, after lust, also chastity as a destroyer, so that the Christian may be all the more guilty who has refused chastity as a preserver.

There will also serve as testimony for us certain women of the world who have gained renown on account of their steadfast univirate: such as Dido, who, a fugitive on foreign soil, where she ought to have been willing to desire the marriage of a king, nevertheless, lest she should experience a second marriage, preferred on the contrary to be burned rather than to marry; or that Lucretia who, although she had once suffered another man by force and against her will, washed with her own blood the defiled flesh, lest she should live no longer as a univira to herself. More examples you may find with greater curiosity from among our own, and indeed so much the more excellent, as it is easier to live in chastity than to die for it; that is, for the soul: that good is to be joined, rather than to be separated by not living.

How many therefore, both men and women, are reckoned in the ecclesiastical orders for their continence, who have preferred to be wedded to God, who have restored the honor of their flesh, and who have dedicated themselves as children of that age to come, slaying in themselves the desire of lust, and all that which could not be admitted within paradise? Whence it must be presumed that those who will wish to be received within paradise ought at last to cease from that thing from which paradise has remained untouched.