Miscellanies 3.12.79

A married couple giving themselves to prayer for a time by mutual consent is a lesson in self-control. For he added “by consent” so that no one might dissolve the marriage, and “for a time” so that the married man, practicing self-control by constraint, might not slip into sin, sparing his own wife but falling into desire for another. For this reason he also said that the man who thinks he is behaving improperly in keeping his daughter a virgin does well to give her in marriage. And the purpose of each, both of the one who has made himself a eunuch and of the one who has joined himself in marriage for the begetting of children, ought to remain unyielding toward the worse. For if he is able to raise the level of his life, he will gain greater worth before God, having exercised self-control purely and with reason; but if he goes beyond the rule he chose, aiming at greater glory, he may then fall short of his hope. For as the eunuchate, so marriage too has its own offices and services for the Lord that differ: I mean caring for children and wife. For the intimacy of the union becomes, it seems, an occasion for the one perfect in marriage, who has taken on the care of everything in the common household. For example, he says that bishops should be appointed who have practiced presiding over their own household and so over the whole church. Let each, then, fulfill his ministry in the work in which he was called, so that he may become free in Christ, receiving the proper reward of his ministry.