Fornication
idea · 4 works · 4 mentions · 8 anchored passages
fornication · adultery
in the texts
Letters
Sexual sin outside marriage, distinguished from marriage and third marriage, with fixed penalties.
Fornication is not marriage, nor even the beginning of marriage.
but we do not subject them to public condemnations, as being preferable to unrestrained fornication.
As for the man who has a wife by corruption, whether secret or more violent, he must of necessity submit to the penalty of fornication.
Stromata
Sexual sin distinguished sharply from lawful marriage throughout the passage.
"neither fornicators nor idolaters nor adulterers nor effeminate nor sodomites nor covetous nor thieves, no drunkards, no revilers, no robbers, shall inherit the kingdom of God.
For just as covetousness is called fornication, being opposed to contentment, and just as idolatry is the apportioning out from the one God to many gods, so fornication is a falling away from the one marriage into many;
De Exhortatione Castitatis Liber
Unlawful sexual desire or union, argued to share the same underlying concupiscence as second marriage.
and since to please by beauty and adornment is a device of carnal concupiscence, which is also the cause of fornication — does not second marriage seem to you to be akin to fornication, since the things are found in it which suit with fornication?
De Pudicitia
Sexual sin of fornication, paired throughout with adultery as unpardonable.
"I remit, to those who have discharged penance, the offences both of adultery and of fornication.
For idolatry too, often upbraided to the people under the name of adultery and fornication, will be joined with it by lot, as also by sequence;
Therefore with us even secret unions — that is, those not first professed before the Church — run the risk of being judged next door to adultery and fornication.