Ad Uxorem

I have judged it fitting, my dearest fellow-servant in the Lord, to provide now, in advance, for what you should pursue after my departure from this world, should I be called before you, and to entrust to your faithfulness, so that, having been provided for, you may observe it. For we are diligent enough in worldly matters, and each of us wishes the other's welfare. If we draw up our wills for such things, why should we not far more provide for our posterity in matters divine and heavenly, and bequeath beforehand, as it were, a legacy — namely, the admonition and direction of those things that are reckoned among the immortal goods and the inheritance of the heavens? May God grant only that you can receive this trust of my admonition in full, to him be honour, glory, splendour, dignity and power, now and for ever and ever. I charge you, then, with as much continence as you can muster, that after my passing you renounce marriage, conferring nothing on me by that name except what will be to your own profit. For Christians who have departed this world there is no promise of any restoration of marriage on the day of resurrection, since they will have been translated into the condition and holiness of angels. There will then be no anxiety arising from jealousy of the flesh; even she whom they intended to have married seven brothers in succession will offend none of her many husbands on the day of resurrection, nor does any of them await to put her to shame. The question of the Sadducees yielded to the Lord's verdict. Do not suppose that I urge upon you the counsel of widowhood now out of any suspicion, born of injured pride, that I must keep the chastity of your flesh for myself. Nothing of voluptuous shame will be resumed between us then. For God does not promise his own such frivolous, such filthy things. But whether what we advise will profit you, or any other woman who belongs to God, it is right to discuss.

We do not, indeed, deny that the union of man and woman has been blessed by God as the seed-bed of the human race, and devised for filling the world and furnishing the age, and therefore permitted — yet only one such union. For Adam was the one husband of Eve, and Eve his one wife, one woman, one rib. Among our forefathers, to be sure, and even among the patriarchs themselves, it was lawful not only to marry but even to use marriages in many ways. There were concubines too. But although this took place figuratively in the synagogue and the church, to interpret it simply: it was necessary to establish institutions that afterward might deserve to be either pruned away or moderated. For a law was to come over them. It was needful that the grounds for fulfilling the law should run ahead. Likewise the word of God was soon to succeed the law, introducing a spiritual circumcision. Therefore, through the indulgence then granted to the matter, provision was made beforehand for the corrections that were to follow, which the Lord in his Gospel, and then the apostle at the ends of the age, either cut away as superfluous or composed where they were unregulated.

But I have not premised these things about the liberty of antiquity and the chastening of later times in order to lay it down that Christ came to part marriages and abolish unions, as though I were now prescribing an end of marrying. Let them see to it who, among the other perversities of their teaching, instruct men to sunder the flesh that is one in two, denying him who, having borrowed the woman from the man, joined the two bodies, taken from a partnership in the same substance, back together in himself by the reckoning of marriage. In short, nowhere at all do we read that marriages are forbidden, since they are clearly a good. Yet what is better than this good we learn from the apostle, who indeed permits marrying but prefers abstinence — the one because of the snares of temptation, the other because of the straits of the times. When the reason for both pronouncements is examined, it is easily discerned that the power of marrying has been granted us out of necessity; but what necessity grants, it itself depreciates. As for what is written, It is better to marry than to burn — what kind of good is this, I ask you, that is commended by comparison with an evil, so that it is better to marry only because it is worse to burn? But indeed, how much better it is neither to marry nor to burn! Even in persecutions it is better to flee by permission from town to town than, once seized and racked, to deny. And more blessed than these are they who have the strength to depart by the blessed confession of testimony. I can say: What is permitted is not a good. For consider: I must die. If I weep over it, that is a good. But if I fear what is permitted, then its permission has a suspect cause. What is better, however, no one has merely permitted, since it is beyond doubt and made plain by its own sincerity. Certain things are not to be sought after merely because they are not forbidden; indeed, in a way they are forbidden, when other things are preferred to them. For the preferring of higher things is a dissuasion from lower ones. A thing is not good merely because it is not evil, nor is it not evil merely because it does no harm. Moreover, what is fully good surpasses this, in that it not only does no harm but is positively profitable. For you ought to prefer what profits to what merely does no harm. Toward the first place all striving contends; the second has consolation, but not victory. But if we listen to the apostle, let us, forgetting the things behind, reach forward to the things before, and be pursuers of the better gifts. Thus, though he lays no snare upon us, he shows us what the advantage is, saying: The unmarried woman thinks on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit; but the married is anxious how she may please her husband. And nowhere does he so permit marriage as not rather to prefer that we strive after his own example. Happy the one who has proved himself like Paul.

But we read that the flesh is weak, and from this we flatter ourselves in certain matters. Yet we read also that the spirit is strong. For both are set down in a single sentence. The flesh is earthly matter, the spirit heavenly. Why, then, more prone to excuse ourselves, do we set up what is weak in us, and fail to maintain what is stronger? Why should not the earthly yield to the heavenly? If the spirit is stronger than the flesh, because also nobler, it is our own fault that we follow the weaker. For among those parted from marriage, two kinds of human weakness make marriages necessary. The first, indeed, and most powerful, is that which comes from the concupiscence of the flesh; the second from the concupiscence of the world. But both are to be rejected by the servants of God, we who renounce both luxury and ambition. The concupiscence of the flesh pleads the offices of one's time of life, demands the harvest of beauty, rejoices in its own disgrace; it says a husband is necessary to the sex, for the sake of authority and consolation, or that she may be safe from evil rumours. And do you, against these counsels of hers, set the examples of our sisters, whose names are with the Lord, who, when their husbands have gone before them, put no occasion of beauty or of age ahead of holiness. For they prefer to be married to God. To God they are beautiful, to God they are maidens. With him they live, with him they converse, him they handle by day and by night; they assign their prayers as dowries to the Lord, and from him they obtain his favour as dowry-gifts, as often as they desire. Thus they have laid hold of the Lord's eternal gift for themselves, and already on earth, by not marrying, are reckoned of the angelic household. By the examples of such women, training yourself in emulation of continence, you will bury that carnal concupiscence with a spiritual affection, blotting out the temporal and fleeting desires of beauty and of age by the compensation of immortal goods. As for this worldly concupiscence, it has as its grounds vainglory, greed, ambition, and want, by which it suborns a necessity of marrying — promising, forsooth, heavenly things: to lord it over another's household, to brood over another's wealth, to extort finery from another, to spend an expense that you do not feel. Let these things be far from the faithful, who have no care for sustaining life, unless indeed we distrust the promises of God, and his care and providence — who clothes the lilies of the field with such grace, who feeds the birds of heaven with no toil of their own, who forbids care for tomorrow's food and clothing, pledging that he knows what each of his servants needs — not, indeed, weights of necklaces, nor wearisome wardrobes, nor Gaulish mules, nor German litter-bearers, all of which kindle the vainglory of marriages, but a sufficiency that is fitting to modesty and chastity. Presume, I beg you, that you need nothing, if you appear before the Lord; nay, that you have all things, if you have the Lord, whose all things are. Reflect on heavenly things, and you will despise earthly ones. Nothing is necessary for a widowhood pledged before God except to persevere.

Men do indeed add to their reasons for marrying the anxiety for posterity and the most 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 — in view, that is, of the impending straits — being ourselves eager to be taken out of this most iniquitous age and received with the Lord, which was even the apostle's own prayer? Offspring, no doubt, are necessary to the servant of God! For we are secure enough about our own salvation that we should have leisure for children. Are we to seek out burdens that are avoided even by most of the heathen, that are compelled by laws, that are stormed against by murders of children — burdens most troublesome to us at last, and as dangerous as they are to our faith? For why did the Lord sing out, Woe to them that are with child and that give suck, unless because he testifies that the encumbrances of children will be an inconvenience on that day of swift escape? These things, surely, are charged to marriages. But this will not concern widows. At the first trumpet of the angel they will leap forth unencumbered; whatever pressure and persecution they will bear freely, with no burden of marriage seething in the womb, none at the breasts. Therefore, whether for the sake of the flesh, or of the world, or of posterity, marriage takes place, none of these necessities suits the servants of God, so that I may hold it enough to have succumbed once to one of them, and to have expiated all concupiscence of this kind by a single marriage. Let us marry daily, and, marrying, let us be caught by the day of terror like Sodom and Gomorrah. For there they were assuredly not only contracting marriages and trading; but when he says, They married and bought, he marks out the more notable vices of the flesh and the world, which most of all draw men away from the divine disciplines — the one through the pleasure of wantonness, the other through the greed of acquisition. And yet that blindness was then reckoned as still far from the ends of the age. What then will happen, if things which of old were detestable in God's sight now keep us from him? The time, he says, is short. It remains that those who have wives should be as though they had none.

But if those who have are bound to obliterate what they have, how much more are those who have not forbidden to seek again what they have not — so that she whose husband has departed from these things should thereafter enjoin upon her sex the rest of abstinence from marrying, which most of the heathen women perform as funeral rites to the memory of their dearest husbands. When anything seems difficult, let us review others who undertake harder things. For how many are there who immediately after the bath set a seal upon their flesh? How many, likewise, who by equal consent abolish the marriage debt between themselves, voluntary eunuchs for the desire of the kingdom of heaven? But if abstinence is endured while marriage is intact, how much more when it is taken away? For I believe it harder to forsake what is intact than not to long for what is lost. Is the continence of a holy woman after her husband's passing, for God's sake, truly hard and arduous enough — when the heathen offer to their Satan priesthoods of both virginity and widowhood? At Rome, indeed, those who handle the image of that inextinguishable fire, tending the auspices of their own punishment along with that very dragon, are appraised for their virginity. For Achaean Juno, at the town of Aegium, a virgin is chosen by lot, and the women who rave at Delphi know nothing of marriage. As for widows, we know that they attend on African Ceres, drawn away from marriage by a most harsh oblivion. For while their husbands remain in life, they not only depart from them, but even introduce others to them in their own place, while the men, surely, laugh at it — all contact removed, even to the kissing of their sons; and yet, while the practice continues, they persevere in such a discipline of widowhood, which excludes even the consolations of holy affection. These things the devil has enjoined upon his own, and he is obeyed. He provokes the servants of God, no doubt, by the continence of his own, as though on equal terms. The very priests of Gehenna practise continence. For he has found out how to ruin men even in good pursuits, and it makes no difference to him whether he kills some by luxury and others by continence.

To us continence has been shown by the Lord of salvation as an instrument of eternity, as a testimony of faith, as a commendation of this flesh that is to be presented to the garment of incorruptibility coming over it, that at the last we may sustain the will of God. For above these things I admonish you to reflect that no one is led out of the world except by the will of God, since not even a leaf falls from a tree without God's will. The same one who brings us into the world must also lead us out of it. Therefore, when the husband has died by God's will, the marriage too is discharged by God's will. Why would you restore what God has put an end to? Why do you spurn the liberty offered you by a repeated servitude of marriage? Are you bound to a wife? he says — seek not loosing. Are you loosed from a wife? — seek not a binding. For even if you do not sin by marrying again, yet he says that the pressure of the flesh will follow. Wherefore let us love the faculty of continence as much as we can, let us drink it in as soon as it presents itself, that what we could not achieve in marriage we may pursue in widowhood. The occasion is to be embraced which takes away what necessity used to command. How much second marriages detract from faith, how much they clamour against holiness, the discipline of the church and the apostle's ruling declare, since it does not allow the twice-married to preside, and does not grant that a widow be enrolled in the order unless she has been the wife of one husband. For the altar of God ought to be set forth pure. That whole brightness of the church is described in terms of holiness. The priesthood of widowhood and of celibacy exists among the nations — out of rivalry with the devil, of course. For the king of the world, the Pontifex Maximus, it is forbidden to marry again. How greatly does holiness please God, when even the enemy affects it! — not, surely, as a friend of any good, but affecting with insult the things that please God the Lord.

For concerning the honours of widowhood with God, it has been settled in one saying of his through the prophet: Do justly by the widow and the orphan, and come, let us dispute, says the Lord. These two names, in so far as they are destitute of human aid, in so far are they exposed to divine mercy; the Father of all takes them up to protect them. See how on equal terms is held the man who has done well by a widow, how great is the widow herself, whose champion will dispute with the Lord! Not so much, I think, is granted to virgins. For although in them an entire integrity and a whole holiness will see the face of God close at hand, yet the widow has something more laborious, because it is easy not to desire what you do not know, and to turn away from what you have never longed for. More glorious is the continence that feels its own right, that knows what it has seen. The virgin may be reckoned happier, but the widow more laborious: the one, because she has always had the good; the other, because she found the good for herself. In the one, grace is crowned; in the other, virtue. For some things belong to the divine bounty, others to our own working. The things granted by the Lord are governed by his grace; the things sought after by man are accomplished by zeal. Strive, then, after the virtue of continence, which is a steward of modesty; after diligence, which keeps women from gadding about; after frugality, which spurns the world. Pursue companionship and conversations worthy of God, mindful of that little verse sanctified by the apostle: Evil communications corrupt good manners. Talkative, idle, wine-bibbing, prying companions are above all an obstacle to the resolve of widowhood. Through talkativeness words hostile to modesty creep in; through idleness they lead one away from strictness; through tippling they insinuate every kind of evil; through prying they convey a rivalry of lust. None of such women knows how to speak of the good of the one-husband estate. For their god, as the apostle says, is the belly, and so too are the things near the belly. These things I now commend to you, my dearest fellow-servant, treated, indeed, more fully than was needful after the apostle, but to be a consolation also to you, in that, if it should so fall out, you will keep my memory fresh in them.

In what came before, my dearest fellow-servant in the Lord, I set out, as best I could, what a holy woman should pursue when her marriage has been taken from her by whatever lot. Now let us turn to a second counsel, in view of human weakness, admonished by the examples of certain women who, having had the occasion of continence given them by divorce or the death of a husband, not only cast away the opportunity of so great a good, but in marrying again refused even to remember the discipline — namely, to marry above all in the Lord. And so my mind has been thrown into confusion, lest I, who lately exhorted you to perseverance in the one-husband estate and in widowhood, should now, by mentioning marriage, hold out to you an offer of slipping down where the slope is easy. But if you are sound of judgment, you surely know that you must keep to what is more profitable. As for what is hard, and not without necessities — and this the greatest resolve of life — I have set it down lower; nor would I have had cause to refer to you about this matter as well, had I not perceived a graver anxiety. For as much as the continence of the flesh that serves widowhood is a great thing, so much, if it cannot be borne, may it seem pardonable. For there is then ready forgiveness for hard things. But as much as to marry in the Lord is something one may carry through, since it is within our power, so much the more blameworthy is it not to observe what you can. Add to this that the apostle, with regard to widows and the unmarried, advises that they remain so, when he says, But I would that all persevered after my own example; whereas concerning marrying in the Lord, when he adds, Only in the Lord, he no longer advises, but plainly commands. Therefore in this matter above all, unless we obey, we are in peril; for one may with impunity neglect what is advised rather than what is commanded, because the one comes from counsel and is set before the will, while the other descends from authority and is bound to necessity: there it seems a failing of liberty, here of contumacy.

Therefore, when in these days a certain woman removed her marriage from the church and joined herself to a heathen, and I recalled that this had been done by others before her, marvelling at either the wantonness of the women themselves or the collusion of their advisers — since no Scripture grants licence for such a deed — I said: Do they perhaps flatter themselves over that passage in the first letter to the Corinthians, where it is written: If any of the brethren has an unbelieving wife, and she consents to the marriage, let him not put her away; likewise let a believing woman married to an unbeliever, if she finds her husband agreeable, not put him away; for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife by the believing husband; otherwise your children would be unclean? Some, perhaps, by understanding this admonition simply, as if of believers joined together, think it lawful to marry even unbelievers. Far be it that anyone who interprets it so should knowingly deceive himself. For it is plain that this Scripture designates those believers who, in a heathen marriage, have been found by the grace of God, according to the very words. If any believer, he says, has an unbelieving wife. He does not say, marries an unbelieving wife. He shows that one already living in marriage with an unbelieving woman, and presently converted by the grace of God, ought to persevere with his wife — namely, for this reason, lest one who has obtained the faith should suppose that he must part from a woman now in a sense alien and foreign. And further he subjoins the reason, that we are called to the Lord God in peace, and that the unbeliever can be won by the believer through the use of marriage. The very closing clause confirms that it is to be understood thus: As each, he says, is called by the Lord, so let him persevere. But the heathen, I think, are called, not the faithful. For if he had pronounced absolutely only about the marriage of believers, he would have permitted the holy to marry indiscriminately. But if he had permitted it, he would never have subjoined so diverse and contrary a pronouncement to his own permission, saying: A woman, when her husband is dead, is free; let her marry whom she wishes, only in the Lord. Here, surely, there is nothing to be reconsidered; for as to what might have been reconsidered, the Spirit sang out: lest we should misuse what he says, Let her marry whom she wishes, he added, Only in the Lord, that is, in the name of the Lord, which is beyond doubt Christian. That Holy Spirit, then, who prefers that widows and the unmarried persevere in integrity, who exhorts us to his own example, prescribes no other form of renewed marriage except in the Lord, and to this sole condition concedes the detriments of continence: Only, he says, in the Lord. He has added a weight to his law: Only. With whatever tone and manner you utter that word, it is a burden: it both commands and advises, both enjoins and exhorts, both asks and threatens. It is a terse, ready sentence, eloquent by its very brevity. So is the divine voice wont to be, that you may at once understand, at once observe. For who could fail to understand that the apostle foresaw many perils and wounds to faith in marriages of this kind, which he forbids, and that he first of all guarded against the defilement of holy flesh in heathen flesh? At this point someone says: What difference, then, is there between the man who in a heathen marriage is chosen by the Lord and one who is a believer from old, that is, before the marriage — that they should not equally beware for their own flesh, since the one is barred from a marriage with an unbeliever, while the other is commanded to persevere in it? Why, if we are defiled by a heathen, is the former not parted from the union, just as the latter is not bound by it? I will answer, if the Spirit grant it, alleging before all things that the Lord holds it more pleasing that a marriage be not contracted than that it be wholly dissolved; in short, he forbids divorce except for the cause of fornication, but commends continence. Let the former, then, have a necessity of persevering, and the latter, moreover, a power even of not marrying. And then, if according to Scripture those who in a heathen marriage are overtaken by faith are not thereby defiled, because together with them others too are sanctified, doubtless those who were sanctified before marriage, if they mingle with alien flesh, cannot sanctify it, since they were not found within it. But the grace of God sanctifies that which it finds. So what could not be sanctified is unclean; and what is unclean has no part with the holy, except to defile and slay it with what is its own.

If these things are so, it is established that believers who undergo marriages with the heathen are guilty of fornication and are to be barred from all communion of the brotherhood, by the letters of the apostle, who says that with such a one we must not even take food. Or shall we, perhaps, produce the marriage-tablets concerning him before the tribunal of the Lord, and allege a marriage duly contracted which he himself has forbidden? Is not that which is forbidden adultery? Is it not fornication? The admission of an alien man does less to violate the temple of God, mingles less the members of Christ with the members of an adulteress. So far as I know, we are not our own, but bought with a price — and with what a price? The blood of God. In wounding this flesh, then, we wound him closely. What did he mean who said that it was a fault to marry an alien, but a slight one, when otherwise, the injury to the flesh that belongs to the Lord set aside, every voluntary fault against the Lord is great? For as much as there was a power of avoiding it, so much is it loaded with the charge of contumacy. Let us now review the other perils, or wounds, as I said, to faith foreseen by the apostle, most grievous not only to the flesh but to the spirit itself. For who can doubt that faith is obliterated daily by intercourse with an unbeliever? Evil conversations corrupt good manners: how much more close living and undivided companionship? Any believing woman must needs observe God. And how can she serve two masters, the Lord and a husband — add, a heathen husband? For in observing a heathen she will display heathen things: beauty, adornment, worldly elegances, baser blandishments, the very secrets of marriage stained — not as among the holy, where the offices of the sex are transacted modestly and moderately, with regard for the very necessity, as though beneath the eyes of God.

But let her see how she renders her offices to her husband. To the Lord, certainly, she cannot give satisfaction according to discipline, having at her side a servant of the devil, his master's agent for hindering the pursuits and duties of the faithful — so that, if a station is to be kept, the husband makes an appointment with her at the baths for that day; if fasts are to be observed, the husband holds a banquet that same day; if she must go out, never does some occupation of the household more readily arise. For who would let his wife go round from street to street, to others' cottages, and indeed the poorer ones, for the sake of visiting the brethren? Who would willingly bear to have her taken from his side for nightly gatherings, should it be necessary? Who, untroubled, would endure her being away the whole night at the solemnities of the Pasch? Who would let her go without his own suspicion to that Lord's banquet which they defame? Who would suffer her to creep into prison to kiss the chains of a martyr? Or even to meet any of the brethren for a kiss? To offer water for the feet of the saints? To snatch something from food or cup, to desire it, to keep it in mind? If a brother arrives from abroad, what hospitality in an alien's house? If anything is to be given in charity, the granary, the store-room are shut fast.

But someone bears with our practices and does not clamour against them. This, then, is the offence — that the heathen know our affairs, that we are under the conscience of the unjust, that it is their indulgence if we do anything. He who tolerates cannot be ignorant; or, if a thing is concealed because he would not tolerate it, then he is feared. But since Scripture commands both — to work for the Lord without another's conscience of it, and without pressure on ourselves — it makes no difference in which part you fail: whether against your husband's conscience, if he is patient, or in your own conflict, while you avoid him as impatient. Do not, he says, cast your pearls before swine, lest they trample them and, turning, rend you also. Your pearls are even the marks of your daily conduct. The more you have taken care to hide them, the more suspect you will have made them, and the more open to heathen curiosity. Will you be hidden, when you sign your bed and your poor body, when you blow away something unclean, when even by night you rise to pray — and will you not seem to be working some magic? Will the husband not know what you secretly taste before any food? And if he learns it is bread, will he not believe it to be that which is said to be? And anyone ignorant of these things — will he simply endure the reason for them? Without a groan? Without suspicion whether it be bread or poison? Some, indeed, endure, but in order to harp on it, in order to make sport of such women, reserving their secrets for the peril which they believe to be theirs, if perchance they are wronged; they who, by the objection of the Name, make their wives' dowries the wages of their silence — meaning, of course, to go to law before the Judge and Watcher. Most women, not foreseeing this, are wont to recognize it either with their estate tormented or their faith lost.

The handmaid of God dwells amid alien labours, and among those she will be plied with the reek of incense for all the names of demons, all the solemnities of kings, at the beginning of the year, the beginning of the month. And she will go forth from a door wreathed with laurel and lit with lamps, as from some new council-chamber of public lusts; she will recline at table with her husband often in clubs, often in taverns, and will sometimes wait upon the wicked, she who once was wont to wait upon the saints — and will she not from this recognize a foretoken of her own damnation, attending upon those whom she was to judge? Whose hand will she long for? Of whose cup will she partake? What will her husband sing to her, or she to her husband? She will hear, no doubt, something of God, as she dines from the tavern. What mention of God from Gehenna? What invocation of Christ? Where the fomentations of faith from the interposing of the Scriptures? Where the Spirit? Where the refreshment? Where the divine blessing? All things alien, all things hostile, all things condemned, sent in by the Evil One to wear away her salvation.

If these things can befall even those who, in a heathen marriage, have attained the faith and remain in it, yet they are excused, as having been found by God within those very marriages, and are commanded to persevere, and are sanctified, and receive a hope of winning the other over. If, then, such a marriage is ratified before God, why should it not also turn out prosperously, so that it is not so harassed by pressures and straits and hindrances and defilements, having now in part the patronage of divine grace? For when he among the heathen is called to some heavenly virtue by the tokens of some honour, he becomes a terror to the heathen, so that he clamours less against her, lays fewer snares, watches less. He has felt the mighty works, seen the proofs, knows that she has been made better; thus he too becomes God's candidate through fear. So men of this kind, in whom God's grace has made acquaintance, are more easily won. But it is another thing to descend, of one's own free will and choice, into things forbidden. What does not please the Lord assuredly offends the Lord, and is assuredly brought in by the Evil One. This will be the sign of it: that to suitors alone the Christian name is pleasing. For this reason there are found those who do not shudder at such women, but seek them out in order to drive them off course, in order to snatch them away, in order to shut them out from the faith. You have a ground here why you should not doubt that no such marriage runs a prosperous course, since it is brought about by the Evil One, but condemned by the Lord.

To this let us inquire whether it is rightly so, as though we were truly examiners of the divine pronouncements. Do not even among the nations the strictest masters, those most tenacious of discipline, forbid their slaves to marry abroad — that is, lest they break out into wantonness, desert their duties, betray their masters' affairs to strangers? Have they not, moreover, decreed that those who, after their masters' notice, have persisted in intercourse with another's slaves should be claimed into slavery? Shall earthly disciplines be held stricter than heavenly precepts — so that heathen women, joined to strangers, lose their own liberty, while ours join servants of the devil to themselves and remain in their own standing? They will deny, forsooth, that this was given notice to them by the Lord through the same apostle. What cause can I hold for this madness, except the weakness of a faith ever prone to the concupiscences of worldly joys? Which indeed is most of all found among the more luxurious. For the richer a woman is, and puffed up with the name of matron, the more capacious a house she requires for her burdens, as a field for ambition to run its course. Churches are mean things to such women. With difficulty is there a rich woman in the house of God, and if there is one, with difficulty an unmarried one. What, then, are they to do? Whence, except from the devil, should they seek a husband fit to furnish the sedan-chair, the mules, and the litter-attendants of foreign stature? A Christian, perhaps, even a rich one, might not supply these things. I beg you, set before yourself the examples of the heathen. Most women, both noble by birth and blessed in fortune, join themselves indiscriminately to men ignoble and of middling station, found out for luxury or chosen for licence. Some give themselves to their own freedmen and slaves, the esteem of all men despised, provided only they have those from whom they need fear no hindrance to their own liberty. Does it shame a Christian believer to marry a believer of smaller means, though she is to be the richer in a poor husband? For if the kingdoms of heaven belong to the poor, and not to the rich, the rich man will find more in a poor man. She will be endowed with a greater dowry from the goods of one who is rich in God. Let her be on earth on equal terms, who perhaps will not be so in heaven. Is it to be doubted and inquired into and deliberated over again and again, whether he is fit, in his dowry-gifts, to whom God has entrusted his own treasure? Whence shall we suffice to tell the felicity of that marriage which the church brings about, and the oblation confirms, and the blessing seals, the angels report, and the Father holds ratified? For not even on earth do children rightly and lawfully marry without the consent of their fathers. What a yoke is that of two believers, of one hope, one vow, one discipline, the same servitude! Both brethren, both fellow-servants, no distinction of spirit or flesh; nay, truly two in one flesh. Where the flesh is one, one too is the spirit. Together they pray, together they prostrate themselves, together they perform their fasts, teaching one another, exhorting one another, sustaining one another. In the church of God both alike, alike at the banquet of God, alike in straits, in persecutions, in refreshments. Neither hides anything from the other, neither shuns the other, neither is a burden to the other. Freely the sick is visited, the needy is sustained. Almsgivings without torment, sacrifices without scruple, daily diligence without hindrance; no furtive signing of the cross, no trembling greeting, no silent blessing. Between the two sound psalms and hymns, and they provoke one another which shall better sing to their Lord. Such things Christ, seeing and hearing, rejoices over. To these he sends his peace. Where two are, there is he himself; and where he himself is, there the Evil One is not. These are the things which that saying of the apostle leaves us to understand under its brevity. Suggest these things to yourself, if there be need. By these turn yourself back from the examples of certain women. It is not lawful for believers to marry otherwise; it is not expedient.