On Monogamy

And so they reproach the discipline of Monogamy as a heresy. And for no other reason are they compelled to deny the Paraclete, than because they regard Him as the author of a new discipline, and indeed a most harsh one for them, so that one must first take a stand on this point in a general discussion. Can it be fitting that the Paraclete should have taught something of such a kind that it could either be reckoned as new against the catholic tradition, or as burdensome against the light burden of the Lord? Now the Lord Himself has pronounced on both points. For when He says: I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now: when the Holy Spirit shall come, He will lead you into all truth, He sufficiently indicates that the Spirit would do those things which might be considered new, as never having been set forth before, and somewhat burdensome, as therefore not having been set forth.

Therefore, you say, by this argument anything new and burdensome could be ascribed to the Paraclete, even if it came from an adversarial spirit. By no means. For an adversarial spirit would be revealed by the diversity of his preaching, first adulterating the rule of faith, and thus adulterating the order of discipline; because the corruption of that which has the prior rank precedes, that is, of faith, which is the prior discipline. It is necessary that one first be a heretic concerning God, and then concerning practice.

But the Paraclete, having many things to teach which the Lord deferred to Him, will, according to the foreordained plan, first bear witness to Christ Himself, as we believe in Him, together with the whole order of God the Creator, and will glorify Him, and will bring Him to remembrance; and thus, being recognized by the principal rule, will reveal those many things which belong to disciplines, the integrity of His preaching speaking in their favor, though they be new, because they are now revealed; though burdensome, because even now they are not endured; yet belonging to no other Christ than Him who said that He had other many things also, which were to be taught by the Paraclete; no less burdensome than those things were to those by whom they could not yet at that time be borne.

But whether monogamy is burdensome, let the shameless weakness of the flesh still consider. Whether it is new, let this at least be settled for now. For we say further, that even if the Paraclete had today determined upon total and complete virginity or continence, so as not to permit even a single marriage to let the heat of the flesh subside, even so He would seem to introduce nothing new; since the Lord Himself opens the kingdoms of heaven to eunuchs, as being Himself also a eunuch; to whom the Apostle also looks, and therefore being himself also castrated, prefers continence. But, you say, with the right to marry preserved. Certainly preserved; and we shall see how far; yet already in that respect destroyed, in which he prefers continence. It is good, he says, for a man not to touch a woman. Therefore it is evil to touch her. For nothing is contrary to good except evil.

And therefore it follows that even those who have wives should be as though they had none; so much the more should those who have none not have them. He also gives the reasons why he so advises; that the unmarried think of God: but the married, how one may please his spouse in marriage. And I can contend: that which is merely permitted is not purely good. For that which is purely good is not permitted, but is freely lawful. Permission has a cause, sometimes even of necessity. Finally, in this case it is not the will of the one permitting that one should marry. For he wills something else: I wish, he says, that you were all such as I also am. And when he shows that it is better, what does he confirm that he wills, if not what he has already stated to be better?

And so, if he permits something other than what he willed, permitting it not by will but by necessity, he does not show that to be purely good which he granted unwillingly. Finally, when he says, It is better to marry than to burn; what kind of good is that to be understood as, which is better than a punishment? Which cannot seem better except when compared to something worst? That is good which holds this name by itself, without comparison not only with evil, but even with another good; so that if it is also overshadowed by comparison with another good, it nonetheless remains in the name of good. But if it is compelled to be called good by comparison with evil, it is not so much good as a kind of lesser evil, which, being obscured by a greater evil, is driven toward the name of good.

Remove the condition, then, 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 in comparison with what it is better. It therefore ceases to be better; and while it is not better, it is not even good, once the condition is removed, which, while it makes it better than another thing, thus compels it to be held as good. It is better to lose one eye than two: yet if you depart from the comparison of both evils, it will not be better to have one eye; because it is not even good. What now, if he accommodates all indulgence of marrying from his own, that is, from human judgment, out of the necessity of which we spoke, Because it is better to marry than to burn?

Finally, turning to the other case by saying, But to those who are married I give charge, not I, but the Lord, he shows that what he had said above was not of the Lord's authority, but of human estimation. But where he turns minds toward continence, I wish however that you were all such: for I think, he says, that I also have the Spirit of God: so that if he had granted anything out of necessity, he might revoke it by the authority of the Holy Spirit. But also John, admonishing that we ought to walk even as the Lord walked, certainly admonished us to walk also according to the holiness of the flesh, so manifestly. And everyone, he says, who has this hope in Him, purifies himself, even as He is pure. For also elsewhere: Be holy, as He also was holy, namely, in the flesh.

For he would not have said this of the spirit, because the spirit is recognized as holy beyond measure, and does not await an admonition to holiness, which is its own nature. But the flesh is taught holiness, which was also holy in Christ. Therefore, if all these things obliterate the license of marrying, both when the condition of the license is examined and when the preference of continence is imposed, why could not the same Spirit, coming after the Apostles to lead discipline into all truth, by degrees of time (according as Ecclesiastes says, There is a time for every matter), now impose the final clasp upon the flesh, no longer obliquely calling away from marriage, but openly, since now the time has been more gathered in, some 160 years having elapsed since then? Would you not reconsider this yourself? This discipline is ancient, already foreshadowed then in the flesh and will of the Lord: thereafter in the counsels as well as the examples of His Apostles. Long ago we were destined for this holiness.

The Paraclete introduces nothing new. What He forewarned, He defines; what He bore with, He has set forth. And now, reconsidering these things, you will easily persuade yourself that it was far more fitting for the Paraclete to preach single marriage, who could have preached none at all, and that it is more to be believed that He tempered what He ought also to have taken away, if you understand what Christ wills. In this also you ought to recognize the Paraclete as advocate, in that He excuses your weakness from total continence.

Let mention of the Paraclete now be set aside, as of some authority of our own. Let us unfold the common documents of the ancient scriptures. This very thing is demonstrated by us, that the discipline of monogamy is neither new nor foreign, but on the contrary both ancient and proper to Christians; so that you may perceive the Paraclete to be rather its restorer than its founder. As regards antiquity, what more ancient form can be brought forward than the very instinct of the human race? God fashioned one woman for the male, one rib of his being taken, and certainly from among many. But also in the preface of that very work: It is not good, He says, 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 the law for the future. For it was said prophetically: And they shall be two in one flesh, not three, nor more. Otherwise, they would no longer be two, if more.

The law stood firm. Finally, the union of marriage persisted in the founders of the race until the very end; not because there were no other women, but because for that reason there were none, lest the firstfruits of the race be contaminated by a double marriage. Otherwise, if God had willed it, there could have been: certainly He could have taken from the number of their daughters, having Eve no less from his bones and from his flesh, if this could have been done piously. But when the first crime, murder, was inaugurated in fratricide, a second crime no less worthy of it was the two marriages. For it makes no difference whether someone has had two wives one at a time, or whether two wives have each made one husband. The number of those joined and separated is the same. Yet the institution of God, once violated by Lamech, thereafter stood firm until the end of that race. No second Lamech appears, married to two wives in the same way. Scripture denies what it does not record.

Other iniquities provoked the flood; those of whatever kind were once defended; yet not seventy times seven, which two marriages deserved. But also the reformation of the second human race is reckoned by a monogamous mother. Again two persons in a single marriage. Monogamy is recognized even in the animals themselves, lest even beasts be born of adultery. Of all the beasts, he says, of all flesh, you shall bring two into the ark, that they may live with you, male and female. There shall be of the flying animals according to their kind, and of all the serpents of the earth according to their kind, two of all shall enter with you, male and female. In the same form he commands that seven also be chosen from pairs, male and female, one and one. What more shall I say? Even the unclean birds were not permitted to enter with more than two females.

This much as regards the testimony of beginnings, and the defense of our origin, and the precedent of divine institution. Which is assuredly a law, not merely a record; for if it was so done from the beginning, we find ourselves directed to the beginning by Christ: as in the question of divorce, when he says that it was permitted by Moses on account of their hardness of heart, but that from the beginning it was not so, he without doubt recalls to the beginning the indivisibility of marriage. And therefore those whom God joined from the beginning as two into one flesh, let not man today put asunder. The Apostle also says, writing to the Ephesians: that God purposed in himself, for the dispensation of the fullness of times, to recapitulate all things in Christ, both which are in the heavens and which are on the earth, in him.

So also the Lord put on himself the two letters of Greece, the first and the last, figures of beginning and end meeting in himself: so that just as α is rolled forward to ω, and again ω is folded back to α, he might show that in himself is both the course of the beginning to the end, and the return of the end to the beginning; so that every dispensation, ending in him through whom it began, that is through the Word of God who was made flesh, might end just as it also began. And so thoroughly are all things recalled in Christ to the beginning, that faith also has returned through circumcision to the integrity of that flesh, as it was from the beginning; and the freedom of foods and abstinence from blood alone, as it was from the beginning; and the indivisibility of marriage, as it was from the beginning, and the restraint of divorce, which was not from the beginning; and finally the whole man is recalled to paradise, where he was from the beginning.

Why then should he who cannot present himself as complete as when he was sent forth from there, not refer even monogamy back to that Adam? So far as concerns the restoration of the beginning, the logic of your dispensation and your hope demands of you what was from the beginning, according to the beginning which is reckoned for you both in Adam and reviewed in Noah. Choose in which of them you reckon your beginning. In both of them the rule of monogamy claims you for itself.

But also if the beginning passes forward to the end, as α to ω, and the end sends back to the beginning, as ω to α, and thus our reckoning is transferred into Christ, the animal into the spiritual, because not first that which is spiritual, but that which is animal, then that which is spiritual: let us likewise see whether you owe the same to this second reckoning also; whether it is fitting that you be in the same form as the last Adam, as also the first; since the last Adam, that is Christ, was wholly unmarried, which also the first Adam was before his exile.

But granting to your weakness the example of his flesh, the more perfect Adam, that is Christ, more perfect also on this account in that he is more complete, meets you as a eunuch in the flesh if you are willing; but if you are not sufficient for that, he meets you as monogamous in the spirit, having one Church as his bride, according to the figure of Adam and Eve; which the Apostle interprets as that great mystery, as having corresponded in Christ and the Church, through the spiritual, to carnal monogamy. You see therefore how, even when you reckon your account in Christ, you cannot honor him without the profession of monogamy, unless you be in the flesh what he is in the spirit, though you ought equally to be what he was in the flesh.

But let us still seek out for ourselves some founders of origin. For certain persons are not pleased with monogamous parents, Adam and Noah, and perhaps not with Christ either. They appeal finally to Abraham, being forbidden to acknowledge any father other than God. Let Abraham now be our father, and Paul also. In the Gospel, he says, I have begotten you. Show yourself also a son of Abraham. For your reckoning in him is not an indiscriminate one. There is a definite time at which he is your father. For if we are counted as sons of Abraham by faith, as the Apostle teaches, saying to the Galatians: Know ye therefore, that they which are of faith, these are the sons of Abraham; when did Abraham believe God, and it was counted to him for righteousness? I think, while still in monogamy, because not yet in circumcision.

But if afterwards he was changed in both respects, both into bigamy 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 you are his son according to faith, not according to flesh. Or if you follow the later Abraham as father, that is the bigamist, receive also the circumcised one. If you reject the circumcised one, then you will also refuse the bigamist. His two dispensations, differing from each other in two ways, you will not be able to mix. He began to be a bigamist together with circumcision, a monogamist together with uncircumcision. Do you receive bigamy? I admit circumcision also. Do you maintain uncircumcision? You are bound also to monogamy. So thoroughly are you a son of the monogamous Abraham as also of the uncircumcised; so that if you are circumcised, you are no longer his son, because you will not be of faith, but of the seal of faith justified in uncircumcision.

You have the Apostle; learn with the Galatians. Likewise even if you have brought bigamy upon yourself, you are not a son of that Abraham whose faith preceded in monogamy. For even if he is afterwards called the father of many nations, yet of those nations whose members had to be reckoned as sons of Abraham by faith preceding bigamy. From that point let things look to themselves. Figures are one thing, forms another. Images are one thing, definitions another. Images pass away when fulfilled; definitions remain to be fulfilled. Images prophesy; definitions govern. What that bigamy of Abraham portends, the same apostle teaches, the interpreter of both Testaments, just as he also determines that our seed is called in Isaac. If you are of the free woman, belonging to Isaac, he certainly endured one marriage. These therefore are, as I think, those among whom I am reckoned. The rest I know not.

If you look around at the examples of some David who even through blood brought marriages upon himself, or some Solomon even rich in wives; bidden to follow better things, you have also Joseph the once-married, and on this account, I dare say, better than his father; you have Moses, the close arbiter of God; you have Aaron, the chief priest. The second Moses also of the second people, who led our image into the promise of God, in whom the name of the Lord was first dedicated, was not a bigamist.

After the ancient examples of original persons, let us likewise pass to the ancient documents of the legal Scriptures, so that we may review in order all our equipment. And since certain persons sometimes say they have nothing to do with the law, which Christ did not dissolve but fulfilled, and sometimes seize upon what they want from the law; plainly we too say in this way that the law has passed away, so that its burdens, which according to the judgment of the Apostles not even the Fathers were willing to bear, have been relinquished; but those things which pertain to righteousness not only remain preserved, but are even amplified: so that our righteousness may be able to abound above the righteousness of the Scribes and Pharisees. If righteousness, then certainly also chastity.

If therefore, because it is commanded in the law that a man should take his brother's wife who died without children in marriage, to raise up seed to his brother, and this can happen more than once to one person according to that crafty question of the Sadducees, they therefore think that frequent marriages are also otherwise permitted; they ought first to understand the reason of the precept itself, and so they will know that that reason has now ceased, being among those things of the law that have been annulled. It was necessary to succeed to the marriage of a brother who died without children. First, because that ancient blessing still had to run its course: Increase and multiply. Then, because the sins of the fathers were also exacted from the children. Third, because eunuchs and the barren were held in disgrace.

Therefore, lest those also be judged accursed who had died childless not by fault of nature but by the intervention of death, a vicarious and as it were posthumous offspring was provided for them from their own kin. But where the end of the ages has also annulled Increase and multiply, the Apostle introducing: It remains, that they also who have wives be as though they had none, because the time is short; and: The sour grape has ceased, eaten by the fathers, to set the children's teeth on edge: for every man shall die in his own iniquity; and eunuchs not only were freed from disgrace, but even merited grace, being invited into the kingdoms of heaven; the law of succeeding to a brother's marriage being buried, the contrary of it obtained, of not succeeding to a brother's marriage. And so, as we said before, what has ceased to be valid, its reason having ceased, cannot furnish an argument for another matter.

Therefore a wife shall not marry her deceased husband, who would certainly be marrying a brother if she married. For we are all brothers: and she who is to marry must marry in the Lord, that is, not a pagan, but a brother; because the old law also admits the marriage of foreigners. Moreover, since it is also provided in Leviticus: Whosoever shall take his brother's wife, it is uncleanness, it is a disgrace, he shall die without children; without doubt, while he is forbidden to marry again, she also is forbidden, having no one to marry except a brother. How therefore the Apostle will agree with the Law, which he does not attack entirely, will be shown when we come to his epistle. Meanwhile, as regards the Law, its arguments are more applicable to us. Finally, the same law forbids priests to marry again. It also commands the daughter of a priest who is widowed or put away, if she has no seed, to return to her father's house and be fed from his bread.

Therefore, if she has no seed, not so that if she has she may marry again: for how much more will she not marry again if she has children! But so that if she has them, she may be fed rather by her son than by her father, whereby the son also fulfills the commandment of God, Honor thy father and mother. But Jesus, the high priest and great one of the Father, clothing us from his own substance (for those who are baptized in Christ have put on Christ), has made us priests to God his Father according to John. For he also calls back that young man hastening to his father's funeral for this reason, to show that he calls us priests, whom the law forbade to be present at the burial of parents: Above every dead soul, he says, the priest shall not enter, and for his father and for his mother he shall not defile himself. Are we therefore also to observe this prohibition? Not at all.

For our one father God lives, and our mother the Church; and we ourselves are not dead, who live to God; nor do we bury the dead, because they also live in Christ. Certainly we are priests called by Christ, debtors to monogamy by the ancient law of God, which then prophesied us in its priests.

Now, turning to our own law properly speaking, that is, to the Gospel, by what examples are we received! While we come to the pronouncements, behold, straightway as if on the threshold, two patronesses of Christian holiness meet us—monogamy and continence: one chaste, in Zacharias the priest; the other intact, in John the forerunner: one appeasing God, the other proclaiming Christ; one proclaiming the whole priest, the other presenting more than a prophet, namely him who not only proclaimed or pointed out Christ in person, but also baptized him. For who would more worthily initiate the body of the Lord than such flesh as both conceived it and brought it forth. And Christ indeed a virgin brought forth, about to marry once after the birth, so that both titles of holiness might be reckoned in Christ's account, through a mother who was both virgin and wife of one husband. But when the infant is presented in the temple, who receives him into his arms? Who first recognizes him in the spirit?

A just and prudent man, and certainly not a digamist, lest Christ should more worthily be proclaimed shortly after by a woman—an aged widow and wife of one husband—who, being also devoted to the temple, sufficiently portended in herself what manner of persons ought to cleave to the spiritual temple, that is, to the Church. Such were the witnesses the infant Lord experienced, and as an adult he had no others. I find Peter alone as a married man, through his mother-in-law; I presume him a monogamist, through the Church, which, built upon him, was to place every rank of its order from monogamists. The rest, since I do not find them as husbands, I must understand either as eunuchs or as continent men. For even if among the Greeks women and wives are reckoned under a common word, for ease of usage (though there is a proper word for wives), we shall not therefore interpret Paul as though he were showing that the Apostles had wives.

If he were disputing about marriages (which he does in what follows, where the Apostle could more aptly have named some example), he would rightly seem to say: Have we not power to lead about a wife, as the other apostles and Cephas? But when he subjoins those things which show his abstinence in the matter of food and drink, saying: Have we not power to eat and to drink? He is not showing that wives were led about by the Apostles—for even those who have no wives still have the power to eat and drink—but simply women, who by that same institution by which they also accompanied the Lord, ministered.

Now indeed if Christ reproves the Scribes and Pharisees, sitting in the chair of Moses, and not doing what they taught, how is it that he himself would have placed upon his own chair one who would have been more mindful of commanding the holiness of the flesh, yet not also of practicing it, than he had in every way impressed upon them that it was both to be taught and to be practiced—first from his own example, then from other arguments; when he says that the kingdom of heaven belongs to children; when he makes others like them after marriage who are as children; when he calls to the simplicity of the dove, a bird not only harmless but also chaste, which one male alone knows; when he denies the Samaritan woman a husband, so as to show that a man of many wives 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 celibate!

For Elijah was nothing other than John, who came in the power and spirit of Elijah; when that glutton and drunkard, frequenter of dinners and suppers with publicans and sinners, dines once at a single wedding, though many were certainly marrying. For he wished to celebrate weddings as often as he wished them to exist.

But let these arguments be thought rather forced from conjecture, if the pronouncements which the Lord uttered in his treatment of divorce do not also stand by them—divorce which, once permitted, he now forbids; first, because from the beginning it was not so, just as with the number of marriages; then, because those whom God has joined, let not man put asunder; namely, lest he act against the Lord. For he alone will put asunder who also joined; and he will put asunder not through the hardness of divorce, which he reproaches and restrains, but through the debt of death. For not one of two sparrows falls to the ground without the Father's will. Therefore, if those whom God has joined, man shall not put asunder by divorce; it is equally consistent that those whom God has separated by death, man shall not join by marriage; about to act against God's will in joining a separation, just as if he had separated a union.

This as regards not destroying God's will and restoring the form of the beginning. Moreover, another reason also concurs; or rather not another, but the one which imposed the form of the beginning and moved God's will to the prohibition of divorce: Because whoever shall put away his wife, except for the cause of adultery, causes her to commit adultery; and: whoever shall marry her that is put away by her husband, commits adultery likewise. For neither can a divorced woman lawfully marry; and if she commits any such act without the name of marriage, does it not receive the designation of adultery, seeing that adultery is a crime in marriage? God has judged otherwise than men, so that in every case, whether through marriage or openly, the admission of another man is pronounced adultery by God. Let us see, then, what marriage is before God, and so we shall know what adultery equally is. Marriage is when God joins two into one flesh, or, finding them already joined in the same flesh, has ratified the union.

Adultery is when, in whatever manner two are disjoined, another flesh—nay, an alien flesh—is mingled, of which it cannot be said: This is flesh of my flesh, and this bone of my bones. For this was said once, and done once, and as from the beginning, so also now it cannot apply to another flesh. Therefore you will say in vain that God is unwilling for a divorced woman to be joined to another man while her husband lives, as though he were willing when he is dead; since if she is not bound to him when dead, neither is she bound when living; as divorce dissolves marriage just as death does, she will not be bound to him from whom that by which she was bound has been severed; so it matters not whether she marries while her husband is alive or dead. For she does not sin against him, but against herself. Every sin that a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits adultery sins against his own body.

But he commits adultery, as we have established above, who mingles another flesh with himself over and above that former flesh which God either joined into two, or found already joined. And therefore he took away divorce, which was not from the beginning; so that what was from the beginning—the perseverance of two in one flesh—he might protect, lest the necessity or occasion of a third union of flesh break in, permitting divorce only for that cause, if perchance it has already occurred, against which precaution is taken. So far indeed was divorce from being from the beginning, that among the Romans this kind of harshness is noted as having been committed after the six hundredth year from the founding of the City. But they, even without divorcing, mingle adulteries; for us, even if we divorce, it will not be lawful even to marry.

I see that from this point we are being urged on to the Apostle. In order to perceive his meaning more easily, it must be all the more insistently established beforehand that a woman is the more bound, after her husband's death, from admitting another man. For let us recall that divorce comes about either from discord or produces discord; but death comes by the law of God, not from any offense of man. And it is the debt of all, even of those who are not married.

Therefore if a divorced woman, who through discord and anger and hatred and the causes of these—injury or insult or any complaint whatsoever—has been separated both in soul and body, is bound to an enemy, not to say a husband; how much more is she who has been separated from marriage not by her own fault nor by her husband's, but by the occurrence of the Lord's law—not separated but left behind—bound even to her deceased husband, to whom she owes harmony even in his death? From whom she heard no divorce, did not depart; to whom she wrote no bill of divorce, she is with him; whom she was unwilling to lose, she retains. She has with her the freedom of the mind, which presents to a person by imaginary enjoyment all that he does not have. I ask the woman herself at last: Tell me, sister, did you send your husband before you in peace? What will she answer? Was it in discord?

Then she is all the more bound to him with whom she has a case before God. She has not departed who is held. But it was in peace. Then she must needs persevere in that peace with him whom she can no longer divorce—not even so about to marry if she could have divorced him. For indeed she both prays for his soul, and entreats refreshment for him in the meantime, and fellowship with him in the first resurrection, and offers sacrifice on the anniversary days of his falling asleep. For if she does not do these things, she has truly divorced him, as far as in her lies; and indeed this the more unjustly, in the manner in which she was able, because she was not able; and this the more unworthily, the more unworthy it already is, if because he did not deserve it. Or shall we count nothing after death? According to some Epicurus, and not according to Christ.

But if we believe in the resurrection of the dead, we shall certainly be held accountable to those with whom we are to rise again, to render an account of one another. But if in that age they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are equal to the angels; we shall not on that account be unbound from our deceased spouses, because there will be no restoration of marriage. Nay, we shall be all the more bound, because we are destined for a better state, to rise again into spiritual fellowship, to recognize both ourselves and our own. For otherwise how shall we sing thanks to God eternally, if there shall remain in us no sense and memory of this debt? If we shall be reformed in substance but not in consciousness?

Therefore those of us who shall be with God shall be together, since all are with the one God (though the reward be various, though there be many mansions with the same Father) having labored for one denarius of the same reward, that is, eternal life, in which he will all the more not separate those whom God has joined than he forbids them to be separated in this lesser life. Since these things are so, how shall she be free for another husband, who is already occupied with her own even into the future? But we speak to both sexes, even if the discourse is addressed to one; because one discipline governs both. Shall she have one in spirit and another in the flesh? This will be adultery—the consciousness of one woman toward two husbands.

If the one has been separated from the flesh, but remains in the heart; there (where even thought without bodily intercourse both completes adultery beforehand from concupiscence, and constitutes marriage from the will) he is still a husband, possessing that very thing through which he also became one, that is, the soul: in which if another also 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 when he has been made more pure.

In order, then, that you may marry in the Lord according to the Law and the Apostle (if indeed you even care about this), what manner of person are you, seeking that marriage which those from whom you seek it are not permitted to have: from a monogamist bishop, from presbyters and deacons of the same sacred order, from widows, whose way of life you have refused for yourself? And they will indeed give out husbands and wives just as they give out morsels of bread. For among them this holds: To every one that asketh thee thou shalt give. And they will join you together in the virgin Church, the one bride of the one Christ. And you will pray for your husbands, the new one and the old one. Choose to which of them you will present yourself as an adulteress. Both, I suppose. But if you are wise, be silent about the deceased. Let your silence be a bill of divorce to him, already written in favor of another's dowry.

In this way you will deserve a new husband, if you forget the old one. You ought rather to please him on whose account you chose not to please God. These are the things which the Psychics wish the Apostle to have approved, or to have not recognized at all, when he wrote: A woman is bound for as long a time as her husband lives; but if he shall have died, she is free: let her marry whom she will; only in the Lord. For from this passage they defend the license of a second marriage, or rather of any number, if of a second: for that which has once ceased to be one is subject to every number. But in what sense the Apostle wrote this will become clear, if it is first established that he did not write it in the sense which the Psychics employ. It will be established, if one recalls those things which are contrary to this passage both in doctrine, and in intent, and in the personal discipline of Paul himself.

For if he permits second marriages, which were not so from the beginning, how does he affirm that all things are to be gathered back into Christ from the beginning? If he wishes us to repeat marriages, how does he defend our seed in Isaac, with one husband as its author? How does he arrange the entire order of the Church from monogamists, if this discipline does not come first among the laity, from whom the order of the Church advances? How does he call away those still in marriage from the fruit of marriage, saying that the time is short, if through death he calls back those who have escaped marriage into marriage again? If these things are contrary to that passage under discussion, it will be established, as we have said, that he did not write it in the sense which the Psychics employ. Because it is easier that that one passage should have some rationale which agrees with the rest, than that the Apostle should appear to have taught things mutually contradictory.

We shall be able to recognize that rationale in the subject matter itself. What was that subject matter which led the Apostle to write such things? The novice state of the Church, new and then at its very height of growth, which he was nourishing with milk, not yet with the solid food of stronger doctrine: so much so that, on account of that infancy of faith, they did not yet know what they ought to do regarding the necessity of flesh and sex. We understand even the particular forms of this from his replies, when he says: Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman; but on account of fornications, let every man have his own wife: he shows that there were those who, having been found in marriage when they came to faith, feared that it might not be lawful for them thenceforth to use their marriage, because they had believed in the holy flesh of Christ.

And yet he grants this according to indulgence, not according to command; that is, permitting, not prescribing it to be so. Otherwise, he would have preferred all to be what he himself was. Likewise, writing back concerning divorce, he shows that some had thought about this matter too: especially because even in pagan marriages they did not think they ought to persevere after faith. They also sought counsel concerning virgins (for there was no commandment of the Lord), that it is good for a man to remain so; namely, in whatever state he was found at faith. Thou art bound to a wife, seek not to be loosed. Thou art loosed from a wife, seek not a wife: but if thou hast taken a wife, thou hast not sinned: because for one loosed from a wife before faith, a second wife after faith will not be counted as second, since she is the first after faith. For even our very life is reckoned from faith.

But here he says he is sparing them: otherwise the tribulation of the flesh would follow, for those who, on account of the straits of the times, refuse the encumbrances of marriage; but rather that solicitude should be had for deserving the Lord, not for a husband. And thus he revokes what he permitted. So therefore in that very same passage, in which he defines that each one ought to remain in the calling in which he was called, adding: A woman is bound as 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; here also he shows that this is to be understood of her who was herself likewise found loosed from a husband, just as the husband was loosed from a wife; the loosing having taken place through death, not through divorce: because he would not permit the divorced to marry, contrary to the former precept.

And so a woman if she shall have married will not sin, because neither will this second husband be counted as second, who is the first from faith, and this is so much the case that he therefore added: Only in the Lord; because he was dealing with her who had had a pagan husband, and having lost him had believed; lest she should presume that even after faith she could marry a pagan; although the Psychics do not care about this either. Let us know plainly that it is not so in the Greek original as it has gone into common use through the clever or simple transposition of two syllables: If her husband shall have fallen asleep, as though it sounds of the future, and thereby seems to pertain to her who has already lost her husband in the faith. This indeed, if it were so, would be a license emitted to infinity, giving her a husband as many times as one was lost, with no shame in marrying, agreeable even to pagans.

But even if it were so as of the future: If whose husband shall have died, the future would equally pertain to her whose husband will die before faith. Take whichever reading you will, so long as you do not overturn the rest. For when those sentences also yield: Thou wast called as a servant, care not for it: Thou wast called uncircumcised, be not circumcised: Thou wast called circumcised, bring not the uncircumcision; with which concurs: Thou art bound to a wife, seek not to be loosed: thou art loosed from a wife, seek not a wife; it is sufficiently manifest that these things pertain to those who, established in a new and recent calling, were consulting about the matters in which they had been found at faith. This will be the interpretation of that passage to be examined on this point, whether it agrees both with the time, and the occasion, and with the preceding examples and arguments as well as with the subsequent sentences and meanings.

And first of all, whether it agrees with the Apostle's own personal counsel and practice: for nothing is more to be guarded against than that anyone should be found inconsistent with himself.

Hear also the most subtle argumentation on the contrary side. The Apostle, they say, so far permitted the repeating of marriage that he bound only those who are in the clergy with the yoke of monogamy: for what he prescribes to certain persons, he does not prescribe to all. Does he then also not prescribe to bishops alone what he prescribes to all; if what he prescribes to bishops he does not also prescribe to all? Or is it 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 selection might be made into the clergy?

But when we are puffed up and inflamed against the clergy, then we are all one; then we are all priests; because he hath made us priests unto God and the Father: when we are challenged to equality with priestly discipline, we lay aside our insignia, and we are unequal: Concerning ecclesiastical orders it was being treated, what manner of persons ought to be ordained. It was fitting therefore that every form of common discipline should be set forth on its own face, a kind of edict destined for all in the precept, whereby the people might the better know both the order to be observed by themselves, which would make their superiors, and lest even that honor itself should flatter itself with any license, as though from the privilege of its position. The Holy Spirit foresaw that certain persons would say, "All things are lawful for bishops;" as that Uthinensian of yours feared not even the Scantinian law. For how many digamists preside among you, insulting the Apostle, certainly not blushing, when these things are read under their authority!

Come now, you who think that the exception of monogamy was made concerning bishops, depart also from the remaining titles of discipline which are ascribed to bishops along with monogamy. Be not blameless, sober, of good behavior, hospitable, apt to teach; nay rather be given to wine, and ready with the hand to strike, and quarrelsome, and a lover of money, and one who does not rule his own house, nor cares for the discipline of his children, nor even seeks a good reputation from outsiders. For if bishops have their own law concerning monogamy, the other things also which ought to accompany monogamy will have been written for bishops. But for the laity, to whom monogamy does not apply, the other things also are foreign. You have escaped, O Psychic, if you will, the bonds of all discipline.

Prescribe consistently that those things are not commanded to all which are commanded to certain persons; or if the other things are indeed common, but monogamy is imposed on bishops alone, are those alone to be pronounced Christians upon whom the whole of discipline has been conferred?

But also writing to Timothy, he wishes young women to marry, to bear children, to be mistresses of households. He directs this to those of the kind he designates above, young widows, who having been found in widowhood, and having followed it for some time, after they had held Christ in luxury, wish to marry, having the judgment that they have rescinded their first faith: namely that faith from which, having been found in widowhood and having professed it, they do not persevere. On account of which he wishes them to marry, lest they afterwards rescind the first faith of the widowhood they had undertaken, not that they should marry as often as, being tempted in widowhood, or rather having lived in luxury, they were unwilling to persevere. We read also when writing to the Romans: But she that is under a husband is bound to the living husband by law; but if he shall have died, she is discharged from the law of the husband.

So then she will be counted an adulteress if she be joined to another man while her husband lives. But if her husband shall have died, she is freed from the law, so as not to be an adulteress if she become another man's. But also recognize what follows, to what end that meaning which flatters you leads: Therefore, he says, my brethren, ye also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that ye should become another's, even his who was raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit unto God. For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were through the law, wrought in our members to bring forth fruit unto death: but now we have been discharged from the law, having died to that wherein we were held, so that we serve in newness of spirit, and not in oldness of the letter.

If therefore he commands us to be made dead to the law through the body of Christ, which is the Church, which consists in the spirit of newness, not through the letter of oldness, that is of the law; removing you from the law, which does not hold a wife, her husband being dead, from becoming another man's, he reduces you to the contrary condition, that you should not marry after the loss of a husband; and by as much as you would not be counted an adulteress if you became another man's after the death of your husband, if you were still to live under the law, by so much, from the contrariety of your condition, it prejudges you as guilty of adultery in marrying another after the death of your husband: because now you have been made dead to the law, it cannot be lawful for you, since you have departed from her under whom it was lawful for you.

Now if the Apostle had also absolutely permitted marrying again in the faith after the loss of a marriage, he would have done so in the same way as he did certain other things contrary to the form of his own rule, according to the circumstances of the times: circumcising Timothy on account of the false brethren who had been brought in, and leading certain shaven men into the temple on account of the observance of the Jews—he who rebukes the Galatians for wishing to live under the Law.

But circumstances so required, that he might become all things to all men, so as to gain all, travailing with them until Christ should be formed in them, and warming them as a nurse warms the little ones of the faith, teaching certain things by way of permission, not by command—for it is one thing to indulge, another to command—and thus granting a temporary license to marry again on account of the weakness of the flesh, just as Moses granted the right of divorce on account of the hardness of heart. And here likewise we shall supply the complement of this meaning. For if Christ took away what Moses commanded, because from the beginning it was not so, Christ will not on that account be reckoned as having come from another power; why should not the Paraclete also take away what Paul indulged?

Because the second marriage also was not so from the beginning, nor should he therefore be regarded with suspicion as an alien spirit, provided only that what is added be worthy of God and of Christ? If it was worthy of God and of Christ to restrain hardness of heart when its time was fulfilled, why should it not be more worthy of both God and Christ to dispel weakness of the flesh now that the time is more fully gathered in? If it is just that marriage should not be dissolved, surely it is also honourable that it should not be repeated. Indeed, in the world both are reckoned as good discipline: the one under the name of concord, the other under the name of chastity. Hardness of heart reigned until Christ; let weakness of the flesh have reigned until the Paraclete. The new law took away divorce—it had something to take away. The new prophecy takes away the second marriage, no less than divorce of the former.

But hardness of heart yielded to Christ more readily than weakness of the flesh. Paul defends more for himself here than that defended Moses; yet he defends it while catching him as one who indulges, and refuses him as one who prescribes—which eludes his weightier judgments and his enduring intentions; which does not allow us to render to the Apostle what he himself prefers. And how long will this most shameless weakness persist in assailing what is better? Its time was until the Paraclete should work—to whom were deferred by the Lord those things which could not then be borne, which it is now fitting for no one to claim he cannot bear; 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 prefaced it also with, The spirit is willing; so that the spirit may overcome the flesh, so that what is weak may yield to what is stronger.

For also: He who is able to receive it, let him receive it, he says; that is, he who cannot, let him depart. That rich man also departed, who had not received the commandment to divide his substance among the poor, and was dismissed by the Lord to his own judgment. Nor will hardness therefore be imputed to Christ on account of the fault of any person's free will. Behold, he says, I have set before thee good and evil; choose what is good; if thou canst not, because thou wilt not (for he shows that thou canst, if thou wilt, since he set both before thy free choice), thou must depart from him whose will thou dost not do.

What hardness then is ours, if we renounce those who do not do the will of God? What heresy, if we judge second marriages, as unlawful, on a par with adultery? For what is adultery but an unlawful marriage? The Apostle marks those who forbade marriage altogether, who also forbade certain foods which God created. But we no more take away marriages by refusing second ones than we condemn foods by fasting more frequently. It is one thing to take away, another to moderate; it is one thing to lay down a law against marrying, another to establish a limit on marrying. Plainly, those who reproach us with harshness or heresy in this matter, if they so foster the weakness of the flesh as to think it must be indulged in marrying frequently: why do they neither endure it in another matter, nor foster it with pardon, when it has been overcome by torments into denial?

Surely that weakness deserves more excuse which fell in battle than that which fell in the bedroom; which succumbed on the rack than which succumbed in the bed; which yielded to credulity than which yielded to lust; which was overcome with groaning than which was overcome with willingness. But that one they drive from communion, because she did not endure to the end; while this one they receive, as though she too had endured to the end. Set forth what each failed to endure to the end, and you will find the cause of her more honourable who could not endure cruelty than of her who could not endure chastity. And yet not even a bloody defection does weakness of the flesh excuse, much less a shameless one.

I laugh, moreover, when weakness of the flesh is urged against us—that which ought to be called the greatest strength. To marry again is a matter of vigour; to rise up to the works of the flesh from the repose of continence is a matter of robust constitution. Such weakness suffices for a third, and a fourth, and perhaps even a seventh marriage; so that she who is stronger as often as she is weaker will have henceforth not the Apostle as her authority, but some Hermogenes, who was accustomed to take more wives than he painted—for material abounds in him, whence also, presuming that the soul is from matter, he has far less the spirit from God, being no longer even a psychic, because not psychic from the breath of God. What if someone pleads poverty, so as openly to profess his flesh as prostituted—marrying for the sake of support—forgetting that one must not be anxious about food and clothing? He has God as the feeder even of ravens, even as the adorner of flowers.

What if someone urges the loneliness of his house? As though one woman provides company for a man who is close to flight: he has a widow, at any rate, whom he may lawfully take. Not only one wife of this kind, but even several is it permitted to have. What if someone thinks of posterity with the same spirit as Lot's wife with her eyes, so that one remarries because he had no children from the former marriage—a Christian, forsooth, seeking heirs, who is himself disinherited of the whole world? He has brethren, he has the Church as mother. It is another matter if they believe that even before Christ the Julian laws are in force, and suppose that the unmarried and childless cannot receive their full share under the testament of God. Let such persons therefore marry on to the very end, so that in that confusion of the flesh, like Sodom and Gomorrah and the days of the flood, they may be overtaken by that final departure of the age.

Let them add the third saying: Let us eat, and drink, and marry: for tomorrow we die; not reflecting that that Woe upon those who are with child and giving suck will come far more grievously and bitterly in the shaking of the whole world than it came in the devastation of one small part of Judaea. Let them gather fruits well suited to the last times from repeated marriages—flowing breasts, and nauseated wombs, and wailing infants. Let them prepare for Antichrist the things upon which he may more lustfully rage. He will bring them midwives as executioners.

They will indeed have something to plead before Christ—a specious privilege, the weakness of the flesh in every respect. But these will judge them: not Isaac our monogamous father, nor certain Johns who are eunuchs of Christ, nor Judith the daughter of Merari, nor so many other examples of the saints. Pagan judges are wont to be appointed. The queen of Carthage will rise up and pronounce judgment upon Christian women—she who, a fugitive and on foreign soil, and at that very moment the foundress of so great a city, when she ought to have desired the marriage of a king of her own accord; yet lest she should experience a second marriage, she preferred on the contrary to be burned rather than to marry. There will sit beside her also a Roman matron who, although through a nocturnal violation, having nonetheless experienced another man, washed the stain of the flesh with her own blood, that she might vindicate monogamy in her own person.

There were also those who preferred to die for their husbands rather than to marry after their husbands. To idols at least both monogamy and widowhood are manifest. On the female Fortune no woman places a crown unless she be a univira; as neither on mother Matuta. The Pontifex Maximus and the Flaminica marry but once. The priestesses of Ceres, even while their husbands are living and consenting, are widowed by a friendly separation. There are also those who judge us on the score of total continence—the virgins of Vesta and of Juno of Achaia, and of Diana of Scythia, and of Pythian Apollo. Even the ministers of that Egyptian bull will judge the weakness of Christians on the score of continence. Blush, O flesh, that hast put on Christ. Let it suffice thee to marry once—that for which thou wast made from the beginning, to which thou art recalled at the end. Return to Adam, or rather to the earlier one, if thou canst not attain to the last.

He tasted once of the tree, once he lusted, once he covered his shame, once he blushed before God, once he hid his blush, once he was exiled from the paradise of holiness, once thereafter he married. If thou wast in him, thou hast thy pattern; if thou hast passed over into Christ, thou oughtest to be better. Show us a third Adam, and him a digamist, and then thou wilt be able to be what thou canst not be between the two.