De Monogamia

The heretics do away with marriage, the natural-minded heap it up. The former do not marry even once, the latter marry more than once. What are you about, O law of the Creator? Between alien eunuchs and your own charioteers you complain just as much of the obsequiousness within your own house as of the disdain shown from outside. Thus those who abuse you wrong you no less than those who do not use you at all. Yet such continence is not to be praised, because it is heretical, nor is such licence to be defended, because it is natural-minded. The one blasphemes, the other runs riot; the one destroys the God of marriage, the other confounds him. But among us, whom the recognition of the spiritual graces rightly makes worthy to be called spiritual men, continence is as religious as licence is modest, since both are with the Creator. Continence honours the law of marriage, licence tempers it; the one is not compelled, the other is governed; the one has free choice, the other a measure. We acknowledge one marriage, as we acknowledge one God. The law of marriage carries the greater honour where it also has its modesty. But to the natural-minded, who do not receive the Spirit, the things of the Spirit are not pleasing. So, while the things of the Spirit do not please them, the things of the flesh will please them, as being contrary to the Spirit. "The flesh," he says, "lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh." And what will the flesh lust after but the things that are more of the flesh? For this reason it was made an alien to the Spirit from the very beginning. "My Spirit," he says, "shall not remain in these men for ever, because they are flesh."

And so they reproach the discipline of monogamy as a heresy, and for no other cause are they more compelled to deny the Paraclete than because they suppose him to be the founder of a new discipline, and indeed of one most harsh to them. Hence the first thing to be settled, in a general inquiry, is whether the Paraclete could have taught any such thing as might either be reckoned new, against catholic tradition, or burdensome, against the Lord's light burden. On both points the Lord himself has pronounced. For when he said, "I have yet many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now; when the Holy Spirit comes, he will lead you into all truth," he sufficiently signified that the Spirit would bring forward such things as might both be reckoned new, as never published before, and at some time burdensome, as being for that reason not yet published. "Then," you say, "by this argument anything new and burdensome can be ascribed to the Paraclete, even if it should come from the adversary spirit." By no means. For the adversary spirit would be manifest from the diversity of his preaching, first adulterating the rule of faith, and so adulterating the order of discipline, because the corruption of that which holds the prior place comes first, that is, of faith, which is prior to discipline. A man must first be a heretic concerning God, and then concerning the rule of conduct. But the Paraclete, having many things to teach which the Lord deferred to him, according to the appointed limit, will first of all bear witness to Christ himself, such as we believe him, together with the whole ordering of God the Creator, and will glorify him, and will make mention of him, and being thus recognized by the principal rule, will reveal those many things which belong to the disciplines, the integrity of his preaching vouching for them as faithful—though new, because now revealed, though burdensome, because not even now endured—yet belonging to no other Christ than him who said he had also many other things which the Paraclete should teach, no less burdensome to us than those things were to those by whom in that time they could not yet be borne.

But whether monogamy is burdensome, let the still shameless weakness of the flesh look to that; whether, on the other hand, it is new, let this be meanwhile established. For we say something more: even if the Paraclete had this day determined entire and unbroken virginity or continence, so as not to permit the fervour of the flesh to spend itself even in a single marriage, even so he would seem to introduce nothing new, since the Lord himself opens the kingdom of heaven to eunuchs, being himself a eunuch—looking upon whom the apostle too, being himself castrated, prefers continence. "But," you say, "with the right of marrying preserved." Plainly it is preserved—and we shall see how far—yet already destroyed in that part where he prefers continence. "It is good," he says, "for a man not to touch a woman." Therefore it is bad to touch one; for nothing is contrary to the good except the bad. And therefore it remains "that even those who have wives should be as though they had none," all the more that those who have none ought not to have them. He gives the reasons too why he so advises: that the unmarried think of God, but the married how a man may please his wife in marriage. And I can contend that what is permitted is not purely good. For what is purely good is not permitted, but is freely allowed. A permission sometimes has its cause also in necessity. In short, in this matter it is not the will of him who permits that men should marry. For he wills another thing: "I would," he says, "that you all were as I am." And when he shows it to be better, what else does he confirm to be his will than that which he set before as better? And so, if he permits what is other than what he willed, permitting not by will but by necessity, he shows that to be not purely good which he allowed against his will. In short, when he says, "It is better to marry than to burn," what kind of good is that to be understood, which is better than a penalty? which cannot seem better except in comparison with the worst? That is good which holds this name by itself, without comparison—I do not say with an evil, but even with another good—so that, even if compared with another good it is overshadowed, it nevertheless remains within the name of good. But if it is forced to be called good only by comparison with an evil, it is not so much good as a kind of inferior evil which, being obscured by a higher evil, is pushed to the name of good. Take away the condition, then, so that you do not say "It is better to marry than to burn," and I ask whether you would dare to say "It is better to marry," without adding wherein it is better. It thus becomes no longer better, and while it is not better, neither is it good, once the condition is removed which, while it makes the one thing better than another, thereby forces it to be held good. "It is better to lose one eye than two." Yet if you depart from the comparison of two evils, it will not be better to have one eye, because it is not even good. What now, if he accommodates all the indulgence of marrying out of his own, that is, out of human feeling, from that necessity of which we have spoken—because it is better to marry than to burn? In short, turning to the other case by saying, "But to the married I command, not I, but the Lord," he shows that those things which he had said above were not of the Lord's authority but of human estimation. But where he bends men's minds to continence—"I would that you all were as I am"—"I think," he says, "that I too have the Spirit of God," so that whatever he had indulged out of necessity he might revoke by the authority of the Holy Spirit. But John too, admonishing that we ought so to walk as the Lord also did, certainly admonished us to walk according to the holiness of the flesh as well. So, more plainly: "And everyone," he says, "who has this hope in him purifies himself, even as he also is pure." For elsewhere too: "Be holy, as he also was holy"—namely, in the flesh. For of the Spirit he would not have said it, because the Spirit is acknowledged holy of itself and does not await an admonition to holiness, which is its own proper nature. But the flesh is taught holiness, which in Christ also was holy. Therefore, if all these things obliterate the licence of marrying—both by inspection of the condition of the licence and by the imposition of the preference for continence—why could not the same Spirit, coming after the apostles to lead discipline into all truth through the gradations of the times (according to Ecclesiastes, "There is a time for everything"), now lay upon the flesh its final clasp, no longer calling it obliquely away from marriage but openly, since now the time is the more contracted, some hundred and sixty years having since been spun out? Would you not yourself reflect within you: "This is an old discipline, foreshown even then in the flesh and will of the Lord, then in the counsels as well as the examples of his apostles? Of old we were destined to this holiness. The Paraclete brings in nothing new. What he foretold he defines; what he endured he now demands." And now, considering these things, you will easily persuade yourself that it much more befitted the Paraclete to preach single marriages, who might have preached none at all, and that it is the more to be believed that he tempered what it would have become him even to take away—if you understand what Christ wills. In this too you ought to recognize the Paraclete as an advocate, in that he excuses your weakness from total continence.

Let the mention of the Paraclete now withdraw, as of some authority of our own. Let us unroll 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 rather both ancient and proper to Christians, so that you may regard the Paraclete as its restorer rather than its founder. As to its antiquity, what older form can be brought forward than the very census of the human race? God fashioned one woman for the man, one rib of his being plucked out—and that out of many. But also in the very preface of the work: "It is not good," he says, "for the man to be alone; let us make a helper for him." For he would have said "helpers," if he had destined him for several wives. He added a law also concerning the future, since it was said prophetically: "And they two shall be in one flesh"—not three, nor more; otherwise no longer two, if more. The law stood. In short, the union of marriage persisted among the founders of the race down to the end—not because there were no other women, but because there were none for the very reason that the first-fruits of the race might not be defiled by a double marriage. Otherwise, if God had willed, they might have existed; surely he would have taken one from the multitude of his daughters, having an Eve no less from his own bones and flesh, if this could have been done piously. But where the first crime, murder, was dedicated in fratricide, no crime was so fit to hold the second place as a double marriage. For it makes no difference whether one man had two wives, each singly, or whether two women each made him singly hers. The number of those joined and of those parted is the same. Yet, once forced by Lamech, the institution of God thereafter stood firm to the very end of that race. There was no second Lamech, married after the same manner to two wives. Scripture denies what it does not note. Other iniquities provoked the flood, once for all rebuked, such as they were, yet not seventy times seven, as the two marriages deserved. But the reformation also of the second human race is reckoned from a monogamous mother. Again two undertake to grow and abound in one flesh: Noah and his wife and their sons in single marriages. Even in the animals themselves monogamy is recognized, lest even the beasts should 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: of the flying creatures according to their kind, and of all the serpents of the earth according to their kind: two of all shall go in to you, male and female." In the same manner he commands seven also to be taken by pairs, of male and female, one and one. What more shall I say? Even to the unclean birds it was not allowed to enter with two females.

So much as concerns the testimony of the beginnings, and the championship of our origin, and the prejudgment of the divine institution. And this surely is a law, not a mere monument; for if it was so done from the beginning, we find ourselves directed by Christ to the beginning—as, in the question of divorce, when he says that it was permitted by Moses on account of their hardness, but from the beginning it was not so, he without doubt recalls to the beginning the indivisibility of marriage. And therefore "those whom God from the beginning joined into one flesh, two of them, this day man shall not put asunder." The apostle too, writing to the Ephesians, says that God proposed in himself, for the dispensation of the fulfilment of the times, to gather up again all things in Christ to the head, that is, to the beginning, both the things that are above the heavens and those upon the earth, in him. So also the Lord put on two letters of the Greeks, the first and the last, as the figures of the beginning and the end meeting in himself, that, as Alpha rolls on as far as Omega and again Omega folds back to Alpha, he might thus show that in himself there is both the running of the beginning down to the end and the running back of the end to the beginning, so that every arrangement, ending in him through whom it was begun—through the Word of God, namely, who was made flesh—might end in like manner as it had begun. And so far are all things in Christ recalled to the beginning, that even faith has returned from circumcision to the integrity of his flesh, as it was from the beginning; and the liberty 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 lastly, the whole man is recalled into paradise, where he was from the beginning. Why then should not Adam, even as a monogamist, refer you to that place, when he cannot present you as entire as he was when sent forth from it? As far, then, as concerns the restitution of the beginning, the principle both of your appointed condition and of your hope demands of you that which was from the beginning according to the beginning—which is both reckoned to you in Adam and reckoned over again in Noah. Choose in which of them you count your own beginning. In both the censure of monogamy defends you to itself. But if the beginning also passes over to the end, as Alpha to Omega, even as the end sends back to the beginning, as Omega to Alpha, and thus our census is transferred into Christ—from the natural to the spiritual, because "not first that which is spiritual, but that which is natural; afterwards that which is spiritual"—let us accordingly see whether you owe this same thing to this second census also; whether the last Adam too befits you in the same form as the first, since the last Adam, that is, Christ, was wholly unmarried, as the first Adam too was before his exile. But, by the grant of his example to the weakness of your flesh, the more perfect Adam, that is, Christ—the more perfect by that very title, in that he is more entire—meets you, if you are willing, as a eunuch in the flesh. But if you are not equal to that, he meets you as a monogamist in the spirit, having one Church as his bride, after the figure of Adam and Eve, which the apostle interprets as that great mystery, "in Christ and the Church," befitting the carnal monogamy through the spiritual. You see, therefore, how, even in renewing the census in Christ, you cannot present him without the profession of monogamy, unless you are in the flesh what he is in the spirit—although you ought to be in the flesh as well precisely what he was in the flesh.

But let us still seek out for ourselves some chief authors of our origin. For Adam and Noah, monogamist parents, please some men little, and perhaps not even Christ. They appeal, then, to Abraham, although they are forbidden to acknowledge any other father besides God. Let Abraham now be our father, and Paul too: "In the gospel," he says, "I have begotten you." Show yourself a son of Abraham too. For the census in him is not granted you indifferently. There is a certain time at which he is your father. For if we are reckoned sons of Abraham by faith, as the apostle teaches, saying to the Galatians, "You know surely that they who are of faith, these are the sons of Abraham," when did Abraham believe God, and it was reckoned to him for righteousness? While yet in monogamy, I suppose, since not yet in circumcision. But if afterwards he was changed into both—into bigamy by the concubinage of the handmaid, and into circumcision by the seal of the testament—you cannot acknowledge him as father except then, when he believed God, since you are his son according to faith, not according to the flesh. Or if you follow the later Abraham as father, that is, the bigamist, receive the circumcised one too. If you reject the circumcised, then you will refuse the bigamist also. You cannot mix the two dispositions of his, diverse from one another in two ways. He began as a bigamist with circumcision, as a monogamist with the uncircumcision. Do you receive the bigamy? Admit also the circumcision. Do you maintain the uncircumcision? You are bound also to the monogamy. And so far are you the son of the monogamist Abraham, as also of the uncircumcised one, that if you should be circumcised, you are no longer a son, because you will not be of faith, but of the seal of a faith justified in uncircumcision. You have the apostle: learn with the Galatians. Accordingly, even if you should bring bigamy upon yourself, you are not the son of that Abraham whose faith went before in monogamy. For although afterwards he is called the father of many nations, yet of those who, being of a faith going before the bigamy, had sons to be reckoned to Abraham. From there on let the matter look to itself. Figures are one thing, forms another; images 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, even as he determines our seed to be called in Isaac. If you are of the free woman, belonging to Isaac, he assuredly bore one marriage. These, therefore, are they, as I suppose, in whom I am reckoned. The others I do not know. And if I look round upon their examples—of a certain David thrusting marriages upon himself even through blood, of a certain Solomon rich even in wives—being bidden to follow the better things, you have also Joseph wedded to one, and on this account I dare to call him better than his father; you have Moses, God's arbiter from close at hand; you have Aaron the chief priest. The second Moses too of the second people, who led our image into the promise of God, in whom first the name of the Lord was dedicated, was no bigamist.

After the ancient examples of the persons of our origin, let us pass likewise to the ancient documents of the legal Scriptures, that we may review in order our whole array. And since some men at times say they have nothing to do with the law, which Christ did not dissolve but fulfilled, while at other times they snatch from the law what they please, plainly we too say that the law passed away in such manner that its burdens indeed—according to the sentence of the apostles, burdens which not even the fathers were able to bear—were conceded away; but those things which look toward righteousness not only remain reserved, but even enlarged, so that, namely, our righteousness may be able to abound beyond the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees. If righteousness, then surely chastity also. If, then, because it is enjoined in the law that a man should take his brother's wife, when the brother has died without children, in marriage, to raise up seed to his brother—and this can the oftener befall a single person, according to that crafty question of the Sadducees—they therefore think that a frequency of marriages is permitted in other cases also, they must first understand the reason of the precept itself, and so they will know that that reason, now ceasing, belongs to those things of the law which have been done away. It was necessary to succeed to the marriage of a brother who had died without children. First, because that old blessing, "Increase and abound," had still to run its course; next, because the offences of the fathers were exacted even of the sons; thirdly, because eunuchs and the barren were held in dishonour. Therefore, lest those should be judged accursed who had departed childless not by any fault of nature but by the forestalling of death, a substitute and as it were a posthumous offspring was provided for them from their own stock. But when the latter end of the times did away with "Increase and abound," the apostle bringing in, "It remains that those also who have wives should be as though they had none, because the time is contracted," and the sour grape eaten by the fathers ceased to set the children's teeth on edge—"for each shall die in his own sin"—and eunuchs not only lacked dishonour but even earned grace, being invited into the kingdom of heaven; with the law of succeeding to a brother's marriage now buried, the contrary of it prevailed, namely, of not succeeding to a brother's marriage. And so, as we said before, what has ceased to have force, the reason having ceased, cannot lend its argument to another case. Therefore a wife shall not marry her deceased husband—being indeed about to marry a brother, if she should marry; for we are all brothers. And she who is to marry must marry "in the Lord," that is, not a heathen but a brother; for the old law too takes away the wedlock of those of another tribe. And since in Leviticus too it is provided, "Whoever shall take his brother's wife, it is uncleanness, it is shame, he shall die without children," without doubt, while he is forbidden to marry anew, she also is forbidden, having none to marry but a brother. How then this will agree with the apostle and with the law, which he does not in its entirety assail, shall be shown when we come to his epistle. Meanwhile, as far as concerns the law, its arguments suit us the more. In short, the same law forbids priests to marry anew. The daughter of a priest, too, if she be a widow or cast off, and if there be no seed to her, it bids return into her father's house and be fed from his bread. Therefore, "if there be no seed to her"—not that, if there be, she should marry anew (for how much more shall she not marry, if she have children?), but that, if she have them, she should rather be fed by a son than by a father, that the son too may fulfil the precept of God, "Honour father and mother." But us Jesus, the highest priest and great priest of the Father, clothing with his own—for they who are baptized in Christ have put on Christ—has made priests to God his Father, according to John. For he calls back even that young man hastening to his father's funeral, in order to show that we are called priests by him, whom the law forbade to be present at the burial of parents: "Over every dead soul," it says, "the priest shall not enter, and over his father and over his mother he shall not be defiled." Ought we then to observe this interdict also? By no means. For our one Father, God, lives, and our mother, the Church; and we are neither dead, who live to God, nor do we bury the dead, because they too live in Christ. Certainly we are priests, called by Christ, debtors of monogamy, by the ancient law of God, which then in its priests prophesied us.

Now, turned to the law that is properly ours, that is, to the gospel, with what examples are we welcomed, as we come on to its sentences? Behold, at once, as it were on the very threshold, two presidents of Christian holiness meet us: monogamy and continence—the one chaste, in Zacharias the priest; the other entire, in John the forerunner; the one appeasing God, the other proclaiming Christ; the one proclaiming a complete priest, the other preferring one more than a prophet, namely him who not only proclaimed and pointed out Christ before men, but also baptized him. For who could more worthily initiate the body of the Lord than such flesh as both conceived and bore him? And Christ indeed a virgin brought forth, who was to marry once after the birth, that both titles of holiness might be discharged in the census of Christ—through a mother both virgin and wife of one man. But where the infant is presented in the temple, who takes him into his hands? who first acknowledges him in the spirit? A man just and prudent, and surely no bigamist—lest, soon after, Christ should be the more worthily proclaimed by a woman, an aged widow and wife of one man, who, being also dedicated to the temple, portended sufficiently in her own person what manner of persons ought to cleave to the spiritual temple, that is, the Church. Such arbiters the Lord, as an infant, having proved, had no others when grown. Peter alone I find to have been married, through his mother-in-law: a monogamist I presume him to be, through the Church, which, built upon him, was about to set every grade of its order among monogamists. The rest, since I do not find them married, I must of necessity understand to have been either eunuchs or continent. For if among the Greeks, by the ease of custom, women and wives are reckoned by a common word (although there is a proper word for wives), we shall not therefore so interpret Paul as if he showed that the apostles had wives. For if he were disputing about marriages, as he does in what follows—where the apostle could rather have named some example—he would rightly seem to say, "Have we not power to lead about wives, as the rest of the apostles, and Cephas?" But where he subjoins those things which show his abstinence as to the provision of food, saying, "Have we not power to eat and drink?"—he does not show wives led about by the apostles, whom even those who have not still have power to eat and drink, but simply women who, in the same manner in which they accompanied the Lord too, ministered to them. And indeed, if Christ reproves the scribes and Pharisees, sitting in Moses' seat and not doing what they taught, what kind of thing would it be that he himself should set upon his own seat men who should remember to enjoin the holiness of the flesh rather than to undertake it—when he had urged it in all ways both to be taught and to be done? First, by his own example; then by other arguments: when he says that the kingdom of heaven is of children; when he makes others, after marriage, partners with them as children; when he calls us 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, that he might show a numerous husband to be an adulterer; when, in the revelation of his glory, out of so many saints and prophets he chooses to have Moses and Elijah with him, the one a monogamist, the other a eunuch. For Elijah was no other than John, who came in the power and spirit of Elijah—whereas that "man, a glutton and a wine-bibber," a frequenter of dinners and suppers with publicans and sinners, dines once at one wedding, where, of course, many were marrying. For he wished to grace them as often as also to be present at them.

But let these arguments rather be thought to be wrung from conjectures, unless the very sentences also stand by, which the Lord uttered in his treatment of divorce, when he now forbids what was once permitted—chiefly because "from the beginning it was not so," like the number of a marriage; then because "those whom God has joined, man shall not put asunder," namely, that he may not act against the Lord. For he alone shall put asunder who also joined. But he will put asunder not by the hardness of divorce, which he reproaches and restrains, but by the debt of death. Since "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 consonant that those whom God has put asunder by death man shall not join in marriage—being about, in the same way, to join against God's will a separation, as if he had put asunder a conjunction. This much as to the will of God not to be destroyed and the form of the beginning to be restored. But another reason also conspires—nay, not another, but that which imposed the form of the beginning and moved the will of God to the prohibition of divorce—namely, that "whoever shall put away his wife, except for the cause of adultery, makes her to be made an adulteress, and he who takes her that is put away by her husband, commits adultery." May not a woman put away both marry lawfully, and, if she has committed anything of the kind without the name of marriage, not incur the charge of adultery, since adultery is a crime within marriage? God has judged otherwise than men, so that altogether—whether through marriage or in common—the admission of another man is pronounced by him to be adultery. For let us see what marriage is in God's sight, and so we shall recognize what likewise adultery is. Marriage is when God joins two into one flesh, or, finding them joined, has sealed the conjunction in that same flesh. Adultery is when, the two being in any way disjoined, another flesh—nay, a foreign one—is mingled in, of which it cannot be said, "This is flesh of my flesh, and this bone of my bones." For, this having been once done and pronounced as from the beginning, so now too it cannot suit another flesh. And so you will say without cause that God is unwilling for a woman put away to be joined to another man while her husband lives, as though, when he is dead, he were willing—since, if she is not bound to a dead man, then neither to a living one. For she will be no more held, the marriage being dissolved by divorce, than by death, to him to whom that by which she was held has been broken off. To whom, then, will she be held? It is nothing to God whether she marries while her husband is living or dead. For she does not offend against him, but against herself. "Every offence which a man commits is outside the body; but he who commits adultery offends against his own body." And he commits adultery, as we have established above, who mingles to himself another flesh over that former one which God either joined into two or found joined. And therefore he took away divorce, which was not from the beginning, that he might fortify what was from the beginning, the persistence of two in one flesh, lest necessity or occasion of a third joining of flesh should break in—permitting divorce to that cause alone, if perchance there should have come before that against which provision is made. And so far was divorce not from the beginning, that among the Romans it is noted that this kind of hardness was committed only 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 even be lawful to marry.

I see that from here we are now called to the apostle. To perceive his meaning the more easily, the more pressingly must this be first trodden in: that a woman is the more bound to a deceased husband, by so much the less may she admit another man. For let us consider that divorce either arises from discord or causes discord, but death comes by the law of God, not by man's offence, and is the debt of all, even of those not married. Therefore, if a woman put away—who through discord and anger and hatred, and the causes of these, injury or insult or any sort of complaint whatever, is separated both in soul and body—is held to her enemy, not to say her husband, how much more shall she who, by no fault either of her own or of her husband, but by the event of the Lord's law, was not separated from her marriage but left—she shall be his, even though dead, to whom even though dead she owes concord? From whom she heard no divorce, she has not departed; to whom she wrote no divorce, with him she is; whom she was unwilling to lose, she retains. She has with her the licence of her mind, which represents to a man, by an imaginary enjoyment, all that he has not. And in fine I question the woman herself: "Tell me, sister, did you send your husband before you in peace?" What will she answer? Was it in discord? Then she is the more bound to him with whom she has a cause before God. She has not departed who is held. But in peace? Then it is necessary that she persevere in it with him whom she will now not be able to divorce—and not, even so, about to marry, if she could have divorced him. Indeed, she prays for his soul, and entreats refreshment for him in the meanwhile, and fellowship in the first resurrection, and offers on the yearly days of his falling asleep. For unless she do these things, she has truly divorced him, as far as in her lies—and indeed the more unjustly, in that she could not do otherwise, since she could not; and the more unworthily, in that it is now the more unworthy, if it be because he did not deserve it. Or are we to be nothing after death, according to some Epicurus, and not according to Christ? But if we believe the resurrection of the dead, we shall surely be held to those with whom we are to rise again, to render an account of one another. But if "in that age they shall neither marry nor be married, but shall be equal to the angels," shall we not therefore be held to our deceased spouses, because there will be no restoration of marriage? Nay, we shall be the more held, because we are destined to a better state, being about to rise into a spiritual fellowship, to recognize both our own selves and our own people. For otherwise how shall we sing thanks to God for ever, if there shall not remain in us the sense and memory of this debt? if we are to be reformed in substance, not in consciousness? Therefore we who shall be with God shall be together, since all are one before God—although the reward is various, although there are many mansions with the same Father—having laboured for the one penny of the same reward, that is, eternal life, in which the more shall God not put asunder those whom he has joined, as in this lesser life he forbids them to be put asunder. Since these things are so, how shall she have leisure for another man, who is occupied with her own even for the future? But we speak to either sex, although our discourse is to one, because one discipline presides over both. She will have one in the spirit, another in the flesh. This will be adultery: the consciousness of one woman toward two men. If the one is disjoined from the flesh, but remains in the heart—there, where even a thought, without the meeting of the flesh, both perfects adultery beforehand out of concupiscence, and marriage out of will—he is still a husband, possessing that very thing through which also he was made a husband, that is, the mind; in which, if another also shall dwell, this will be the crime. For he is not shut out, if she has departed from the baser commerce of the flesh. The husband is the more honoured, the purer he has become.

So then, that you may marry "in the Lord" according to the law and the apostle—if indeed you even care for this—what kind of person are you, demanding that marriage which it is not lawful to have for those of whom you demand it: from a monogamist bishop, from presbyters and deacons of the same sacrament, from widows, whose sect you have refused in your own person? And they, of course, will so give husbands and wives as they give morsels. For this is among them, "To everyone who asks of you, you shall give." And they will join you in the Church, the virgin, the one bride of the one Christ. And you will pray for your husbands, the new and the old. Choose to which of them you will present yourself an adulteress. To both, I think. But if you are wise, be silent to the deceased. Let your silence be his divorce, written already in another's marriage-deeds. In this way you will earn a new husband, if you forget the old one. You ought rather to please him for whose sake you preferred not to please God. The natural-minded would have it that the apostle approved this, or did not consider it at all, when he wrote: "A woman is bound for as long a time as her husband lives; but if he be dead, she is free: let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord." For from this little chapter they defend the licence of a second marriage—nay, even of many marriages, if of a second; for what has once ceased to be is liable to every number. But in what sense the apostle wrote it will shine forth thus, if it first be established that he did not write it in that sense in which the natural-minded use it. And it will be established if one recalls those things which are diverse from this little chapter, both in doctrine and in will and in Paul's own proper discipline. For if he permits second marriages, which were not from the beginning, how does he affirm that all things are gathered up again to the beginning in Christ? If he wills us to repeat marriages, how does he defend our seed in Isaac, who is the author of one marriage? How does he arrange the whole order of the Church out of monogamists, if this discipline does not first prevail among the laity, out of whom the order of the Church proceeds? How does he call those who are still placed in marriage away from the enjoyment of marriage, saying that the time is contracted, if he recalls into marriage again those who have slipped from marriage through death? If these things are diverse from that chapter of which we treat, it will be established, as we have said, that he did not write it in that sense in which the natural-minded use it; because it is easier that that one little chapter should have some interpretation which agrees with the rest, than that the apostle should be seen to have taught things diverse from one another. That interpretation we shall be able to recognize in the very matter. What was this matter for the apostle, of writing such things? The novitiate of a new and now most especially rising Church, which he was nursing with milk, not yet with the solid food of a stronger doctrine—so much so that, before that infancy of faith, they did not yet know what they ought to do concerning the necessity of the flesh and of sex. The very kinds of which we understand also from his replies, when he says, "But concerning the things of which you write: It is good for a man not to touch a woman; but on account of fornications let each have his own wife." He shows that there were those who, being found in marriage by the faith, feared lest it might not be lawful for them thenceforth to use their marriage, because they had believed in the holy flesh of Christ. And yet "by permission he concedes it, not by command," that is, indulging, not commanding that it be so done. For the rest, he would rather that all were what he himself also was. Likewise, writing again about divorce, he shows that some had pondered about this too, especially because in heathen marriages also they thought they ought not to persevere after the faith. They sought counsel also about virgins (for there was no precept of the Lord), whether it were good for a man so to remain—namely, as he had been found by the faith. "Are you bound to a wife? Seek not loosing. Are you loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife. But if you take a wife, you have not sinned"—because for one who, before the faith, was loosed from a wife, a second wife will not be reckoned after the faith, since she is the first after the faith. For from the faith our very life too is reckoned. But here he says he spares them; otherwise, "tribulation of the flesh would follow," through the straits of the times, for those who refuse the impediments of marriage—nay rather, that solicitude should be had about the Lord, by earning his favour, rather than about a husband. And so he revokes what he permitted. So then, in that very same chapter in which he defines that each should remain in that calling in which he shall be called, adding, "A woman is bound as long as her husband lives; but if he have fallen asleep, she is free, let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord," he shows that here too she is to be understood who had herself been found loosed from a husband, just as a man also loosed from a wife—the loosing being made through death, of course, not through divorce, since he would not permit the divorced to marry against the former precept. And so a woman, if she marry, will not offend, because here too the second husband will not be reckoned, who is the first after the faith; and so it is, that he therefore added, "Only in the Lord," because the question was of her who had had a heathen husband and, on losing him, had believed—lest, namely, even after the faith she should presume that she could marry a heathen; although not even of this do the natural-minded take care. Let us plainly know that it is not so in the authentic Greek as it has passed into use through a crafty or simple overthrow of two syllables: "But if her husband shall have fallen asleep," as though it sounded of the future, and through this it might seem to belong to her who has already, in the faith, lost her husband. If indeed this were so, the licence sent out into infinity would have given her a husband as often as one had been lost, with no shame of marrying suiting even heathens. But even if it were so, as of the future—"If anyone's husband shall be dead"—just as much would the future belong to her whose husband shall die before the faith. Take it as you will, provided you do not overthrow the rest. For since those sentences too yield: "Are you called a servant? Care not. Are you called uncircumcised? Be not circumcised. Are you called circumcised? Bring not the foreskin"—with which there runs together, "Are you bound to a wife? Seek not loosing. Are you loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife"—it is plain enough that these things belong to those who, set in a new and recent calling, were consulting about those matters in which they had been found by the faith. This will be the interpretation of this chapter, to be examined as to whether it agrees both with the time and the cause, and as well with the preceding examples and arguments as with the following sentences and meanings, and above all whether it agrees with the apostle's own counsel and rule; for nothing is to be guarded against so much as that anyone be found at variance with himself.

Hear, too, the subtlest argument on the contrary side. "So far," they say, "did the apostle permit the repeating of wedlock, that he bound to the yoke of monogamy only those who are in the clergy. For what he prescribes to certain persons, he does not prescribe to all." Does he then not also prescribe to bishops alone what he commands to all, if what he prescribes to bishops he does not also command to all? Or is it therefore commanded to all, because also to bishops? and therefore to bishops, because also to all? For whence come bishops and clergy? Is it not from all? If not all are bound to monogamy, whence come monogamists into the clergy? Or shall some separate order of monogamists have to be instituted, from which the choice may be made into the clergy? But when we are exalted and puffed up against the clergy, then we are all one, then all priests, because "he has made us priests to God and the Father." When we are called to an equalizing of the priestly discipline, we lay aside our fillets, and are equals. The matter treated of was the ecclesiastical orders, what manner of men ought to be ordained. It behoved, therefore, that the whole form of the common discipline be set forth at its very front—an edict, as it were, about to be impressed upon all—the more that the people might know the order to be observed by themselves, which makes their rulers; and lest even the honour itself should flatter anything to itself toward licence, as by a privilege of place. The Holy Spirit foresaw that some would say, "All things are lawful for bishops," even as that Utinensian of yours feared not even the Scantinian law. For how many bigamists, indeed, preside among you, insulting the apostle, certainly not blushing, when these things are read under them! Come now, you who think the exception of monogamy was made only of bishops: withdraw also from the rest of your titles of discipline, which are ascribed to bishops together with monogamy. Be not blameless, sober, of good behaviour, adorned, hospitable, teachable—nay rather, be given to wine, and ready of hand to strike, and quarrelsome, and a lover of money, and not ruling your own house nor caring for the discipline of your children, but not even pursuing a good report from those without. For if bishops have their own law concerning monogamy, the other things too which it will behove to accompany monogamy will be written for bishops. But for the laity, to whom monogamy does not belong, the other things too are foreign. You have escaped, natural man, if you will, the bonds of all discipline. Lay down constantly that what is enjoined upon certain persons is not enjoined upon all; or, if the other things are indeed common, but monogamy alone is laid upon bishops only—are those alone to be pronounced Christians upon whom the whole discipline has been conferred?

But writing to Timothy too, he wishes the younger women to marry, to bear children, to act as mothers of families. He directs this to such as he notes above—younger widows, who, having been found in widowhood and having for some while followed it, after they have held Christ in luxury, wish to marry, having judgment because they have broken their first faith, namely that by which, found and professed in widowhood, they do not persevere in it. For which reason he wishes them to marry, lest afterwards they break the first faith of the widowhood they undertook—not that they should marry as often as, being tried in widowhood, nay, having held it in luxury, they have been unwilling to persevere. We read him also writing to the Romans: "But the woman who is under a husband is bound to her living husband; but if he has died, she is released from the law of her husband." Surely, then, while her husband lives she will be thought to commit adultery if she be joined to another man. But if her husband has died, she is freed from the law, so that she is not made an adulteress by another man. But recognize the following words also, by which this sense that flatters you may escape. "And so," he says, "my brethren, you also are made dead to the law through the body of Christ, that you may be made another's, his namely who rose from the dead, that we may bear fruit to God. For when we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which were wrought through the law, were in our members to the bearing of fruit unto death; but now we are made void of the law, dead to that in which we were held, to serve God in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." Therefore, if he bids us be made dead to the law through the body of Christ, which is the Church, which consists in the spirit of newness, not in the letter of oldness, that is, of the law—taking you away from the law, which does not hold a wife to a deceased husband so as to keep her from being made another man's, he brings you back to the contrary condition: that, having lost your husband, you do not marry. And by how much you would not be reckoned an adulteress for being made another man's after your husband's death, if you still had to act in the law, by so much, from the diversity of the condition, does he prejudge you of adultery for marrying another after your husband's death; because you are now made dead to the law, and it cannot be lawful for you, since you have withdrawn from her with whom it was lawful for you.

Now if the apostle had also absolutely permitted one whose marriage was lost in the faith to marry, he would have done so just as he did the other things which, against the form of his own rule, he carried out for the condition of the times—circumcising Timothy on account of the false brethren superintroduced, and bringing certain shaven men into the temple on account of the observance of the Jews, he who chastises the Galatians for wishing to act in the law. But thus the matter demanded, that he should "become all things to all men, that he might gain all," bringing them to birth until Christ should be formed in them, and warming, as a nurse, the little ones of the faith, teaching certain things by permission, not by command (for it is one thing to indulge, another to bid)—accordingly permitting a temporal licence of marrying anew on account of the weakness of the flesh, just as Moses permitted divorcing on account of the hardness of heart. And here too, therefore, we shall render the supplement of this sense. For if Christ took away what Moses enjoined, because "from the beginning it was not so"—and yet Christ is not for that reason to be reckoned to have come from another power—why should not the Paraclete too take away what Paul indulged, because a second marriage too was not from the beginning, nor should he for that reason be held suspect, as a foreign spirit, provided only that what is superinduced be worthy of God and of Christ? If it was worthy of God and of Christ to restrain the hardness of heart when the time was full, why should it not be the more worthy both of God and of Christ to shake off the weakness of the flesh when the time is now the more contracted? If it is just that marriage be not put asunder, surely it is honourable too that it be not repeated. In short, with the world both are reckoned under good discipline—the one under the name of concord, the other 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, which is no less a divorce of the prior one. But hardness of heart yielded to Christ more easily than weakness of the flesh. The latter defends Paul for itself more than the former defended Moses—if indeed it defends him, when it catches at him as indulging, refuses him as prescribing; eluding his better sentences and his perpetual wishes, which do not suffer us to render to this apostle what he prefers. And how long will this most shameless weakness persevere in storming the better things? Its time, until the Paraclete should work, was that to which were deferred by the Lord the things which then could not be borne—which now it befits no one to be unable to bear, because through him by whom strength to bear is given, it is not wanting. How long shall we plead the flesh, because the Lord said, "The flesh is weak"? But he premised also, "The spirit is willing," that the spirit may conquer the flesh, that what is weak may yield to the stronger. For also, "Let him who can receive it, receive it," he says—that is, let him who cannot, depart. So even that rich man departed, who had not received the precept of dividing his substance to the needy, and was dismissed to his own opinion by the Lord. Nor for that is hardness to be imputed to Christ, by reason of the fault of anyone's free choice. "Behold," he says, "I have set before you good and evil. Choose what is good." If you cannot, because you will not (for he shows that you can, if you will, since he set both before your choice), you must needs depart from him whose will you do not do.

What hardness, then, is here of ours, if we renounce those who do not do the will of God? What heresy, if we judge second marriages, as unlawful, next door to adultery? For what is adultery but unlawful marriage? The apostle marks those who altogether forbade men to marry, who also forbade the foods which God created. But we do not the more take away marriages, if we refuse second ones, than we reprove foods, if we fast the oftener. It is one thing to take away, another to temper; one thing to lay down a law of not marrying, another to set a measure of marrying. Plainly, those who reproach us with hardness or heresy in this cause—if they so far foster the weakness of the flesh as to think it must be borne with in marrying frequently—why do they neither bear with it nor foster it with pardon in another cause, when it has been stormed by torments into denial? For surely it can the more be excused which fell in battle than which fell in the bedchamber; which succumbed on the rack than which succumbed in the bed; which yielded to cruelty than which yielded to lust; which was overcome groaning than which was overcome wantonly. But that one indeed they drive from communion, because it did not endure to the end; this one, however, they take up, as though this too had endured to the end. Set forth in what each did not endure to the end, and you will find that one's cause more honourable, which could not endure savagery, than the other's, which could not endure chastity. And yet not even bloody defection does the weakness of the flesh excuse, much less the unchaste.

But I laugh, when the weakness of the flesh is alleged, which is rather to be called the height of strength. To marry again is a matter of vigour; to rise up to the works of the flesh out of the leisure of continence is a sturdiness of loins. Such weakness suffices for a third and a fourth, and perhaps even a seventh marriage—so that she who is the stronger as often as she has been the weaker, will now have for her author not the apostle, but some Hermogenes, wont to lead about more women than to paint. For in him matter abounds, whence, presuming the soul to be matter too, he the more by far has not the Spirit from God—being now not even a natural man, since he is not a natural man from the breath of God. What if one should plead poverty, so as openly to profess his flesh prostituted, marrying for the cause of display, forgetful that one ought not to be anxious about food and clothing? He has God as the feeder even of ravens, the tender even of flowers. What if one should hold out the solitude of his house?—as if one woman would furnish a man with the throng near to a flight. He has a widow, surely, whom he may take. It is permitted to have not one wife of this kind, but even several. What if one should think of posterity with the same mind as Lot's wife with her eyes—so that for this reason one should repeat marriage, because he had no children by the former? A Christian, of course, will seek heirs, himself disinherited of the whole world! He has brothers, he has the Church for a mother. It is another matter, if they believe that even with Christ proceedings are conducted by the Julian laws, and reckon that the celibate and the childless cannot, by the testament of God, take the whole. Let such marry, then, on to the end, that in this confusion of the flesh, like Sodom and Gomorrah and the days of the flood, they may be overtaken by that last exit of the world. Let them add the third saying, "Let us eat and drink and marry, for tomorrow we shall die"—not considering that "Woe" which shall befall the pregnant and the nursing far more grievous and bitter, in the convulsion of the whole world, than it befell in the devastation of one little portion of Judaea. Let them gather fruits, opportune enough for the last times, from their repeated marriages: flowing breasts, and nauseating wombs, and whimpering infants. Let them prepare for Antichrist things on which he may rage the more lustfully. He will bring to them executioner-midwives. They will plainly have something specious to allege to Christ as a privilege: the weakness of the flesh on every side. But this our father Isaac, the monogamist, will now no longer judge—nor any John, the eunuch of Christ, nor Judith the daughter of Merari, nor so many other examples of the saints. Heathen judges are wont to be appointed. The queen of Carthage shall arise and decree against the Christian women—she who, a fugitive and on a foreign soil, and even then in chief the founder of so great a city, when she ought of her own accord to have desired the king's marriage, yet, that she might not experience a second marriage, chose on the contrary to burn rather than to marry. There shall sit by her also that Roman matron, who, though by nightly violence she nonetheless experienced another man, washed away the stain of her flesh with her own blood, that she might vindicate monogamy in her own person. There have been also those who chose to die for their husbands rather than to marry after their husbands. To the very idols, surely, both monogamy and widowhood appear. To Female Fortune none but a wife of one man sets the crown, as neither to Mater Matuta. The Pontifex Maximus and the Flaminica marry but once. The priests of Ceres, even while their husbands live and consent, are widowed by an amicable separation. There are those too who judge us concerning total continence: the virgins of Vesta, and of Achaean Juno, and of Scythian Diana, and of Pythian Apollo. Even the attendants of that Egyptian bull will judge concerning continence the weakness of the Christians. Blush, O flesh, which hast put on Christ! Let it suffice you to marry once—that for which you were made from the beginning, that to which you are recalled from the end. Return to the former Adam, if you cannot to the last. Once he tasted 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 you have been in him, you have your form; if you have passed into Christ, you ought to be better. Produce a third Adam, and him a bigamist, and then you will be able to be what between the two you cannot be.