To Pammachius.
5I ask, then, what is the meaning of men’s obstinate determination to shut their eyes and to refuse to look on what is as clear as day? I have said that there are diversities of gifts in the Church, and that virginity is one gift and wedlock another. And shortly after I have used the words: “I allow marriage also to be a gift of God, but there is a great difference between gift and gift.” Can it be said that I condemn that which in the clearest terms I declare to be the gift of God? Moreover, if Joseph is taken as a type of the Lord, his coat of many colors is a type of virgins and widows, celibates and wedded. Can any one who has any part in Christ’s tunic be regarded as an alien? Have we not spoken of the very queen herself—that is, the Church of the Saviour—as wearing a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colors? Moreover, when I came to discuss marriage in connection with the following verses, I still adhered to the same view. “This passage,” I said, “has indeed no relation to the present controversy; for, following the decision of the Lord, the apostle teaches that a wife must not be put away saving for fornication, and that, if she has been put away, she cannot during the lifetime of her husband marry another man, or, at any rate, that she ought, if possible, to be reconciled to her husband. In another verse he speaks to the same effect: ‘The wife is bound…as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband; she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord,’ that is to a Christian. Thus the apostle, while he allows a second or a third marriage in the Lord, forbids even a first with a heathen.”
6I ask my detractors to open their ears and to realize the fact that I have allowed second and third marriages “in the Lord.” If, then, I have not condemned second and third marriages, how can I have proscribed a first? Moreover, in the passage where I interpret the words of the apostle, “Is any man called being circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised” (a passage, it is true, which some most careful interpreters of Scripture refer to the circumcision and slavery of the Law), do I not in the clearest terms stand up for the marriage-tie? My words are these:
“‘If any man is called in uncircumcision, let him not be circumcised.’ You had a wife, the apostle says, when you believed. Do not fancy your faith in Christ to be a reason for parting from her. For ‘God hath called us in peace.’ ‘Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the commandments of God.’ Neither celibacy nor wedlock is of the slightest use without works, since even faith, the distinguishing mark of Christians, if it have not works, is said to be dead, and on such terms as these the virgins of Vesta or of Juno, who was constant to one husband, might claim to be numbered among the saints. And a little further on he says: ‘Art thou called being a servant, care not for it; but, if thou mayest be made free, use it rather;’ that is to say, if you have a wife, and are bound to her, and render her her due, and have not power of your own body—or, to speak yet more plainly—if you are the slave of a wife, do not allow this to cause you sorrow, do not sigh over the loss of your virginity. Even if you can find pretexts for parting from her to enjoy the freedom of chastity, do not seek your own welfare at the price of another’s ruin. Keep your wife for a little, and do not try too hastily to overcome her reluctance. Wait till she follows your example. If you only have patience, your wife will some day become your sister.”
7In another passage we have discussed the reasons which led Paul to say: “Now concerning virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.” Here also, while we have extolled virginity, we have been careful to give marriage its due. “Had the Lord commanded virginity,” we said, “He would have seemed to condemn marriage and to do away with that seed-plot of humanity from which virginity itself springs. Had He cut away the root how could He have looked for fruit? Unless He had first laid the foundations, how could He have built the edifice or crowned it with a roof made to cover its whole extent?” If we have spoken of marriage as the root whose fruit is virginity, and if we have made wedlock the foundation on which the building or the roof of perpetual chastity is raised, which of my detractors can be so captious or so blind as to ignore the foundation on which the fabric and its roof are built, while he has before his eyes both the fabric and the roof themselves? Once more, in another place, we have brought forward the testimony of the apostle to this effect: “Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife.” To this we have appended the following remarks: “Each of us has his own sphere allotted to him. Let me have mine, and do you keep yours. If you are bound to a wife, do not put her away. If I am loosed from a wife, let me not seek a wife. Just as I do not loose marriage-ties when they are once made, so do you refrain from binding together what at present is loosed from such ties.” Yet another passage bears unmistakable testimony to the view which we have taken of virginity and of wedlock: “The apostle casts no snare upon us, nor does he compel us to be what we do not wish. He only urges us to what is honorable and seemly, inciting us earnestly to serve the Lord, to be anxious always to please Him, and to look for His will which He has prepared for us to do. We are to be like alert and armed soldiers, who immediately execute the orders given to them and perform them without that travail of mind which, according to the preacher, is given to the men of this world ‘to be exercised therewith.’” At the end, also, of our comparison of virgins and married women we have summed up the discussion thus:
“When one thing is good and another thing is better; when that which is good has a different reward from that which is better; and when there are more rewards than one, then, obviously, there exists a diversity of gifts. The difference between marriage and virginity is as great as that between not doing evil and doing good—or, to speak more favorably still, as that between what is good and what is still better.”
8In the sequel we go on to speak thus: “The apostle, in concluding his discussion of marriage and of virginity, is careful to observe a mean course in discriminating between them, and, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, he keeps to the King’s highway, and thus fulfils the injunction, ‘Be not righteous overmuch.’ Moreover, when he goes on to compare monogamy with digamy, he puts digamy after monogamy, just as before he subordinated marriage to virginity.” Do we not clearly show by this language what is typified in the Holy Scriptures by the terms right and left, and also what we take to be the meaning of the words “Be not righteous overmuch”? We turn to the left if, following the lust of Jews and Gentiles, we burn for sexual intercourse; we turn to the right if, following the error of the Manichæans, we under a pretence of chastity entangle ourselves in the meshes of unchastity. But we keep to the King’s highway if we aspire to virginity yet refrain from condemning marriage. Can any one, moreover, be so unfair in his criticism of my poor treatise as to allege that I condemn first marriages, when he reads my opinion on second ones as follows: “The apostle, it is true, allows second marriages, but only to such women as are bent upon them, to such as cannot contain, lest ‘when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ they marry, having condemnation because they have rejected their first faith,’ and he makes this concession because many ‘are turned aside after Satan.’ But they will be happier if they abide as widows. To this he immediately adds his apostolical authority, ‘after my judgment.’ Moreover, lest any should consider that authority, being human, to be of small weight, he goes on to say, ‘and I think also that I have the spirit of God.’ Thus, where he urges men to continence he appeals not to human authority, but to the Spirit of God; but when he gives them permission to marry he does not mention the Spirit of God, but allows prudential considerations to turn the balance, relaxing the strictness of his code in favor of individuals according to their several needs.” Having thus brought forward proofs that second marriages are allowed by the apostle, we at once added the remarks which follow: “As marriage is permitted to virgins by reason of the danger of fornication, and as what in itself is not desirable is thus made excusable, so by reason of the same danger widows are permitted to marry a second time. For it is better that a woman should know one man (though he should be a second husband or a third) than that she should know several. In other words, it is preferable that she should prostitute herself to one rather than to many.” Calumny may do its worst. We have spoken here not of a first marriage, but of a second, of a third, or (if you like) of a fourth. But lest any one should apply my words (that it is better for a woman to prostitute herself to one man than to several) to a first marriage when my whole argument dealt with digamy and trigamy, I marked my own view of these practices with the words: