Against Jovinian

Only a very few days ago the holy brothers at Rome sent me the little treatises of a certain Jovinian, asking me to answer his absurdities and to crush, with the vigor of the Gospel and the Apostle, the Epicurus of the Christians. When I had read them and could not understand them at all, I began to turn them over more often, and to examine not only the words and sentences but almost every single syllable, wishing first to know what he was saying, and so either to approve or to refute what he had said. But the barbarousness of his writing is so great, and his filthy language so confused with so many faults, that I could understand neither what he says nor by what arguments he wants to prove what he says. For the whole thing swells, the whole thing lies flat; it rises up at every point and, like a crippled snake, breaks down in the very effort. He is not content to speak in our way, that is, in the human way; he attempts something loftier.

"I satisfy those who invited me, not so that I may run with a famous name, but so that I may live cleansed of empty rumor. I beseech the field, the new growths of plantings, the shrubs of tenderness, snatched from the whirlpools of vices, an audience fortified by battle lines. We know the Church to be, by hope, faith, and charity, inaccessible, unconquerable. There is none in her unripe; everyone is teachable; no one can break in by force or elude her by craft."

I ask, what are these monstrosities of words? What disgrace of composition is this? Would you not think him either dreaming in a fever or seized by a frenzied illness, fit to be bound in the bonds of Hippocrates? As often as I read him, wherever my breath fails, there is the pause. Everything begins, everything hangs on something else; you cannot tell what goes with what. And apart from the testimonies of the Scriptures, which he did not dare to alter with that most charming flower of his eloquence, the rest of his language fits any subject, because it fits none. One thing gave me some suspicion of what he meant: that he wishes to praise marriage in such a way as to disparage virginity. For when the lesser is made equal to the greater, the comparison of the inferior is an injury to the superior. We, however, do not disparage marriage by following the doctrine of Marcion and Mani; nor, deceived by the error of Tatian, the founder of the Encratites, do we think all intercourse unclean, as he condemns and rejects not only marriage but also the foods that God created for use. We know that in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware; and that on the foundation of Christ, which Paul the master builder laid, some build gold, silver, precious stones, and others, on the contrary, hay, wood, stubble. We are not ignorant that marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled. We read God's first sentence: "Increase and multiply and fill the earth." But we accept marriage in such a way that we put first virginity, which is born of marriage. Will silver not be silver if gold is more precious than silver? Or is it an insult to the tree and the crop if fruit and grain are preferred to the root and leaves, to the stalk and the ears? As fruit from the tree and grain from the straw, so virginity from marriage. The hundredfold, the sixtyfold, and the thirtyfold fruit, though they spring from one soil and one seed, yet differ greatly in number. The thirty refer to marriage: the very joining of the fingers, as if embracing in a gentle kiss and making a covenant, pictures husband and wife. The sixty refer to widows, because they are placed in straits and lamentation; so they are pressed down by the upper finger, and the greater the difficulty of abstaining from the allurements of pleasure once experienced, the greater the reward. Further, the number one hundred (attend carefully, I beg you, reader) is moved from the left hand to the right, and, by making a circle with the same fingers, though not of the same hand, with which married women and widows are signified on the left, it expresses the crown of virginity. I have said this out of impatience rather than in the order of the argument. For while I am scarcely out of harbor and hoisting the sails with the ropes, a sudden surge of speech has swept me into the middle of the sea of questions. So I will check my course and shorten sail a little; nor will I indulge the sword-point, which already longs to strike a blow for virginity. The farther the ballista is drawn back, the harder it shoots. Delay is no loss where victory becomes more certain by delay. I will set out my opponent's opinions briefly and drag the serpents out of his dark books as from holes, and not allow the poisonous head to hide in the coils of the spotted body. Let what is harmful be laid open, so that it may be crushed when it is laid open.

These are the hisses of the ancient serpent; by these counsels the dragon drove man out of paradise. For by preferring fullness to fasting he promised them that they would be immortal, as though they could never fall; and while he promised divinity equal to God, he drove them out of paradise, so that those who, naked and unencumbered and virgins without any stain, enjoyed the company of the Lord, were cast down into the valley of tears and clothed in sewn tunics of skins. But not to keep the reader too long, I will follow the steps of the division I have set out, and against each of his propositions I will rely above all on the testimonies of the Scriptures, so that he may not chatter in complaint that he was overcome by eloquence rather than by truth. When I have done this and have overwhelmed him with the cloud of both Testaments, I will also take examples from secular literature, to which he himself appeals. And I will show that even among philosophers and men distinguished in public life, virtues are always preferred by everyone to pleasures: that is, Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristides to Aristippus, Epicurus, and Alcibiades. I ask you, virgins and continent persons of both sexes, and married people too, and those twice married, to help my efforts with your prayers. Jovinian is the common enemy of all. For he who asserts that the merits of all are equal does as much injury to virginity, by putting it on a level with marriage, as to marriage, by declaring it lawful in the same way as second and third marriages. He is an adversary also of the twice and thrice married, putting those who were once fornicators and most licentious, after repentance, on the same level as double and triple marriages; except that in this the twice and thrice married have no reason to grieve, since on his view the same fornicator, if he repents, is made equal even to virgins in the kingdom of heaven. I will set out, then, in clearer words that have some coherence, his arguments and examples about marriage, and I will arrange everything in the same order in which he said it. And let it not trouble the reader if he is compelled to read his nausea and vomit. He will drink Christ's antidote the more gladly when the devil's poisons have gone before. Listen patiently, virgins; listen, I beg you, to the most voluptuous composer, or rather pass by his tales as the songs of the Sirens, with ears stopped. Bear your injuries for a little while; think that, crucified with Christ, you are hearing the blasphemies of the Pharisees.

"God's first sentence," he says, "is: 'Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh.'" And lest we should say that this is written in the Old Testament, he asserts that the same is confirmed by the Lord in the Gospel: "What God has joined together, let not man separate"; and he at once adds: "Increase and multiply and fill the earth." And he goes through in order Seth, Enos, Cainan, Mahalalel, Jared, Enoch, Methuselah, Lamech, Noah, saying that all had wives and begot children according to God's sentence; as though the order of generations and the history of the human race could have been told without wives and children! "This," he says, "is Enoch, who walked with God and was caught up into heaven. This is Noah, who, though there were certainly many virgins because of their age, was alone saved with his sons and their wives when the world was wrecked. Again, after the flood, as at a second beginning of the human race, pairs of husbands and wives are joined, and the blessing of generation is renewed afresh: 'Increase and multiply and fill the earth.'" Moreover, permission to eat meat is also granted: "And everything that moves shall be food for you; as the green herbs, I have given you all things." He runs on to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of whom the first married three times, the second once, and the third had four wives, Leah, Rachel, Bilhah, and Zilpah. He asserts that Abraham, for the merit of his faith, received the blessing in the begetting of a son; that Sarah, a type of the Church, in whom the ways of women had ceased, exchanged the curse of barrenness for the blessing of childbirth; that Rebecca went, as to a prophet, to inquire of the Lord, and heard from him, "Two nations and two peoples are in your womb"; that Jacob served for a wife, and when Rachel thought it was a husband's part to give children, and said, "Give me children, or else I shall die," he answered, "Am I in God's place, who has shut you up?" "So well," he says, "did he know that the fruits of marriage belong to the Lord, not to the husband." That Joseph, a holy and most chaste man, and all the patriarchs had wives, whom God blesses equally through Moses. He brings forward Judah and Tamar too; and he touches on Onan, slain by the Lord because, grudging his brother seed, he wasted the work of marriage. He brings forward Moses, and the leprosy of Miriam, who, disparaging her brother on account of his wife, was at once struck by God's vengeance. He praises Samson and extols the uxorious Nazirite with wonderful praises. He goes over Deborah and Barak as well, because without the blessings of virginity they defeated Sisera and Jabin and the iron chariots. He brings into view Jael, the wife of Heber the Kenite, and praises her hand armed with the tent peg. Between Jephthah the father and his virgin daughter, who was sacrificed to the Lord, he says there was no difference; indeed, he prefers the father's faith to the girl who was slain lamenting. He comes to Samuel, another Nazirite of the Lord, who was brought up from infancy in the tabernacle and clothed in the ephod bad, which means linen garments; and he says that he begot sons, and that his priestly purity was not diminished by his wife's embrace. He sets Boaz with his Ruth on the threshing floor, and from there brings forth Jesse and David. He says that David himself, with two hundred foreskins, even at the risk of his life, sought union with the king's daughter. What shall I say of Solomon, whom he puts in the catalogue of husbands and asserts to be an image of the Savior? He even wants it to be written of him: "O God, give your judgment to the king and your righteousness to the king's son," and "To him shall be given of the gold of Arabia, and they shall pray for him always." And suddenly he passes to Elijah and Elisha, and tells as a great mystery that the spirit of Elijah rested on Elisha; why he said this he does not say, unless perhaps he thinks Elijah and Elisha also had wives. He passes to Hezekiah; and while he dwells on his praises, I wonder why he forgot to say, "From now on I will beget children." He reports that Josiah, a most righteous man, in whose reign the book of Deuteronomy was found in the temple, was instructed by Huldah, the wife of Shallum. He puts Daniel too and the three young men among the married. And suddenly passing to the Gospel, he sets down Zechariah and Elizabeth, Peter and his mother-in-law, and the rest of the apostles. And he consequently adds: "But if they wish to adopt an empty defense and plead that the world in its beginnings needed increase, let them hear Paul saying: 'I want the younger widows to marry, to bear children.' And: 'Marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled.' And: 'A woman is bound to her husband as long as her husband lives; but if he dies, let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord.' And: 'Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived and fell into transgression; yet she will be saved through the bearing of children, if she continues in faith and love and holiness with sobriety.' Surely that apostolic saying, 'and let those who have wives be as though they had none,' has no place here; unless perhaps you will say that he wants them to marry because some have already turned back after Satan: as though no virgin fell, and their ruin were not the greater. From this it is clear that you follow the doctrine of the Manichees, who forbid marriage and eating foods that God created for use, having their conscience seared." And after much which it would be tedious to go over now, he launches out, as it were, into a rhetorical commonplace and makes an apostrophe to the virgin, saying: "I do you no injury, virgin. You have chosen chastity because of the present necessity; it pleased you to be holy in body and spirit. Do not be proud: you are a member of the same Church as the married women."

I may perhaps have been excessive in setting out his propositions and have wearied the reader. But I thought it useful to set all his efforts against me like an army drawn up, and to gather the whole hostile host with its squadrons and leaders, so that after the first victory no further battles might arise for me. So I will not fight against individuals, nor be content with scattered skirmishes with a few: the fight must be with the whole army, and the disorderly wedges of the enemy, fighting in the manner of brigands, must be driven back by a line drawn up in order. In the front line I will set the apostle Paul and, as the bravest of commanders, arm him with his own weapons, that is, his own sayings. For when the Corinthians asked about this question, the teacher of the Gentiles and master of the Church answered most fully. And whatever he laid down, let us consider it the law of Christ speaking in him. At the same time, when we begin to refute the propositions one by one, let the reader's silent thought always keep itself for the Apostle, and not, in eagerness for the weightiest questions, neglect what comes first and hurry to the end.

Among other things the Corinthians had asked by letter whether, after coming to faith in Christ, they ought to be celibate and dismiss the wives they had for the sake of continence; or, if they had believed as virgins, whether they should marry; and, when of two pagans one had believed in Christ, whether the believer should leave the unbeliever; and, if wives were to be taken, whether he would bid them take only Christians or pagans as well. Let us see, then, what Paul wrote back to these questions: "Now concerning the things you wrote to me: it is good for a man not to touch a woman. But because of sexual immorality let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband. Let the husband render the debt to his wife, and likewise the wife to her husband. The wife does not have power over her own body, but the husband; likewise the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife. Do not defraud one another, except perhaps by consent for a time, that you may be free for prayer; and come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence. But this I say by way of indulgence, not by way of command. For I wish that all men were as I myself am; but each has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that. But I say to the unmarried and to widows: it is good for them if they remain as I am. But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn." Let us return to the beginning of the testimony: "It is good," he says, "for a man not to touch a woman." If it is good not to touch a woman, then it is bad to touch one; for nothing is contrary to good except bad. But if it is bad and is pardoned, it is allowed for this reason, that something worse than the bad may not happen. But what sort of good is that which is allowed on condition of something worse? For he would never have added, "let each man have his own wife," unless he had first said, "but because of sexual immorality." Take away sexual immorality, and he will not say, "let each man have his own wife." It is as if someone were to lay it down: it is good to eat wheat bread and to eat the finest flour; yet lest anyone driven by hunger eat cow dung, I allow him to eat barley too. Will the wheat not therefore keep its purity, if barley is preferred to dung? That is naturally good which has no comparison with evil, which is not overshadowed by preference for something else. At the same time we must notice the Apostle's prudence. He did not say, "It is good not to have a wife," but, "It is good not to touch a woman," as though there were danger even in touching; as though he who has touched her would not escape her who seizes the precious souls of men, who makes the hearts of young men fly away. "Can a man bind fire in his bosom and not be burned? Or walk on coals of fire and not burn his feet?" So just as he who touches fire is at once burned, so by the touch of man and woman each feels its own nature and perceives the difference of sex. The fables of the pagans too tell that Mithras and Erichthonius were begotten, in a stone or in the earth, from the mere heat of lust. That is why our Joseph too, because the Egyptian woman wanted to touch him, fled from her hands, and, as if from the bite of a rabid dog, lest the poison should gradually spread, threw away the cloak she had touched. "But because of sexual immorality let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband." He did not say, "Because of sexual immorality let each man marry a wife"; otherwise by this excuse he would have loosed the reins to lust, so that as often as a wife died, another would have to be married, lest we commit sexual immorality. But he said, "let him have his own wife": let him have his own, he says, let him use his own, the one he had before he believed, whom it was good not to touch, and after faith in Christ to know only as a sister, not as a wife, unless sexual immorality made touching her excusable. "The wife does not have power over her own body, but the husband; likewise the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife." This whole question concerns those who are in marriage, whether they may dismiss their wives, which the Lord too forbade in the Gospel. So the Apostle says, "It is good for a man not to touch a wife." But since one who has once married cannot abstain except by consent, nor give a bill of divorce to a wife who has not sinned, let him render the debt to his spouse; for he bound himself of his own accord, so that he is compelled to render it. "Do not defraud one another, except perhaps by consent for a time, that you may be free for prayer." I ask you, what sort of good is that which forbids prayer? Which does not allow one to receive the body of Christ? As long as I fulfill the duty of a husband, I do not fulfill that of a continent man. The same Apostle bids us elsewhere to pray always. If we must pray always, then we must never serve marriage, since as often as I render the debt to my wife, I cannot pray. The apostle Peter, who had experience of the bonds of marriage, see how he forms the Church and what he teaches Christians: "Likewise, husbands, living together according to knowledge, giving honor to the woman as the weaker vessel, and as fellow heirs of the manifold grace, that your prayers may not be hindered." See, in the same sense, because in the same Spirit, he says that prayers are hindered by the marital duty. And when he says "likewise," he calls husbands to imitation because he had already given commands to wives above, saying: "That husbands may see your chaste conduct in fear; whose adorning is not the outward arranging of the hair and wearing of gold and putting on of clothing, but the hidden person of the heart, in the incorruption of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is pleasing before God." Do you see what kind of marriage he enjoins between husbands and wives? Living together according to knowledge, so that they may know what God wills and desires, so that they give honor to the weaker vessel of the woman. If we abstain from intercourse, we give honor to our wives; if we do not abstain, it is plain that dishonor is the opposite of honor. To wives too he says: "That husbands may see your chaste conduct, and your adorning, the hidden person of the heart, in the incorruption of a gentle and quiet spirit." O voice truly worthy of the Apostle, of Christ's rock! He gives a law to husbands and wives and, condemning the adorning of the flesh, preaches chastity and the adorning of the inner person, in the incorruption of a gentle and quiet spirit, as if saying: since your outer person is corrupted, and you have ceased to have the blessedness of incorruption, which belongs properly to virgins, imitate at least the incorruption of the spirit by abstinence, though late; and what you cannot do in body, do in mind. For these are the riches, this the adornment of your union, that Christ seeks.

But lest anyone think, from what follows, "that you may be free for prayer, and come together again," that the Apostle wishes this, and does not allow it to prevent a greater fall, he at once adds: "lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence." A fine indulgence indeed, this "come together again": something he blushes to call by its own name, which he puts forward against the temptation of Satan, whose cause is incontinence! We labor to explain as though it were obscure what he himself has explained: "But this I say," he says, "by way of indulgence, not by way of command." And we still mutter that marriage is not called an indulgence but a command; as though second and third marriages were not allowed in the same way; as though the doors of the Church were not opened by repentance even to fornicators and, what is more, to the incestuous! For the violator of his stepmother, whom in the first letter to the Corinthians he had handed over to Satan for the destruction of the flesh, so that the spirit might be saved, he brings back in the second, and he takes pains that the brother may not be swallowed up by excessive sorrow. It is one thing for the Apostle to wish something, another to pardon it. In his wish we earn merit; in his pardon we take advantage. Do you want to know what the Apostle wishes? Join what follows: "For I wish that all men were as I myself am." Blessed is he who will be like Paul! Happy he who hears the Apostle commanding, not pardoning! "This," he says, "is what I wish, what I desire: that you be imitators of me, as I am of Christ." He, a virgin, was born of a virgin, the incorrupt of the incorrupt. We, because we are human and cannot imitate the Savior's birth, let us at least imitate his way of life. That belongs to divinity and blessedness; this to human condition and labor. "I wish all men to be like me," so that while they are like me they may become like Christ, whom I am like. "For he who believes in Christ ought himself to walk as he walked." "But each has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that." What I wish, he says, is plain. But since in the Church there are different gifts, I allow marriage too, lest I seem to condemn nature. And consider at the same time that the gift of virginity is one thing and that of marriage another. For if the reward of married women and of virgins were the same, he would never have said, after the precept of continence, "But each has his own gift from God, one in this way, another in that." Where there is what is proper to each, there is difference between them. I grant that marriage too is a gift of God, but between gift and gift there is a great difference. Finally the Apostle, of the same man who repented after his incest, says, "On the contrary, forgive him and comfort him; and to whom you forgive anything, I forgive also." And lest we think a man's forgiveness to be despised, he added: "For what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did it for your sakes in the presence of Christ." The gifts of Christ are different. That is why Joseph, as his type, had a coat of many colors. And in the forty-fourth psalm we read: "The queen stood at your right hand in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety." And the apostle Peter says: "as fellow heirs of the manifold grace of God," which in Greek is more expressively poikilē, that is, "varied."

There follows: "But I say to the unmarried and to widows: it is good for them if they remain as I am. But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn." After granting the married the use of marriage, and showing what he himself wishes and what he allows, he passes to unmarried women and widows, sets before them his own example, and calls them happy if they remain so. "But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry": the same as above, "but because of sexual immorality," and "lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence." And he gives the reason why he said, "if they do not contain themselves, let them marry": "for it is better to marry than to burn." It is better to marry for this reason, that it is worse to burn. Take away the heat of lust, and he will not say, "it is better to marry." For "better" always looks to comparison with something worse, not to the simplicity of a good that is incomparable in itself. It is as if he said: it is better to have one eye than none; better to lean on one foot and support the other side of the body with a staff than to crawl with broken legs. What do you say, Apostle? I do not believe you when you say, "Though I am unskilled in speech, yet not in knowledge." Just as that came from humility, "For I am not worthy to be called an apostle," and "to me, the least of all the apostles," and "as to one untimely born," so I think this too was said in humility. You know the proper force of words; that is why you take certain testimonies from Epimenides, Menander, and Aratus. When you speak of continence and virginity, you say: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman"; and, "It is good for them if they remain as I am"; and, "I think this is good for them because of the present necessity"; and, "for it is good for a man to be so." When you come to marriage, you do not say, "It is good to marry," because you cannot add "than to burn"; but you say, "It is better to marry than to burn." If marriage is good in itself, do not compare it with burning, but say simply, "It is good to marry." I am suspicious of the goodness of a thing which the greatness of another evil forces to be the lesser evil. But I want not a lighter evil but a simple good in itself.

So far the first section has been explained; let us come to what follows. "To those who are joined in marriage I command, not I but the Lord, that a wife should not depart from her husband; but if she departs, she should remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband; and that a husband should not dismiss his wife. To the rest I say, not the Lord: if any brother has an unbelieving wife, and she consents to live with him, let him not dismiss her," and the rest, up to the place where he says, "As God has called each one, so let him walk, and so I teach in all the churches." This passage does not bear on the present controversy. For he teaches, according to the Lord's sentence, that a wife is not to be divorced except for the cause of sexual immorality, and that, if divorced, she is not to marry another while her husband is alive, or else ought to be reconciled to her husband. And to those whom faith had found in marriage, that is, if one of the two had believed, he commands that the believer should not divorce the unbeliever. After setting out the reasons (that the unbeliever is a candidate for faith if he does not wish to depart from the believer), he commands on the contrary that if the unbeliever divorces the believer on account of faith in Christ, the believer ought to depart, lest he prefer a spouse to Christ, to whom even one's own life must be held second. But now many women, despising the Apostle's command, are joined to pagans and prostitute the temples of Christ to idols; nor do they understand that they are part of his body, whose ribs they are. The Apostle pardons the union with unbelievers of women who already had husbands and afterwards believed in Christ; not of those who, being Christians, married pagans. To them he says elsewhere: "Do not be yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with iniquity? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What agreement has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God." Although I know that very many matrons will rage against me, and with the same shamelessness with which they have despised the Lord will rave against me, a flea and the least of Christians, yet I will say what I think; I will speak what the Apostle taught me: that they belong not to righteousness but to iniquity, not to light but to darkness, not to Christ but to Belial; that they are not temples of the living God but shrines and idols of the dead. Do you want to learn more plainly that it is not at all lawful for a Christian woman to marry a pagan? Hear the same Apostle: "A woman is bound for as long as her husband lives; but if her husband falls asleep, she is free; let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord," that is, a Christian. He who allows second and third marriages in the Lord forbids a first marriage with a pagan. That is why Abraham makes his servant swear on his thigh, that is, by Christ, who was to be born of his seed, that he would not bring a foreign wife for his son Isaac. And Ezra appeased God's offense by the divorce of such wives. And the prophet Malachi says: "Judah has transgressed, and has done an abomination in Israel and in Jerusalem; for he has profaned the holy thing of the Lord, and has loved and had the daughter of a foreign god. The Lord will destroy the man who does this, master and disciple, from the tents of Jacob, and him who offers a gift to the Lord of hosts." I have said this so that those who compare marriage with virginity may know that such marriages at least are to be ranked below second and third marriages.

To the earlier discussion, in which he had taught that the believer ought not to depart from the unbeliever but remain in the marriage as faith had found them, and that each, whether celibate or married, should continue as he was found by Christ's baptism, he suddenly adds the parables of the circumcised and the uncircumcised, of slave and free, and under their figure discusses the married and the unmarried. "Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on the foreskin. Was anyone called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God. Let each remain in the calling in which he was called. Were you called as a slave? Do not let it trouble you; but even if you can become free, rather use it. For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who was called free is Christ's slave. You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men. So, brothers, let each one remain before God in that in which he was called." And first, since I think some will find fault with this interpretation, I should like to ask what the connection is, that while discussing husbands and wives he should suddenly pass to the comparison of Jew and Gentile, slave and free, and again, when this discussion is finished, return to virgins, saying, "Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord." What is the point of a comparison of Jew and Gentile, slave and free, between marriage and virginity? Second, how can "Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on the foreskin" be understood? Can one who has once had his foreskin cut off draw it on again if he wishes? Next, in what sense is "For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who was called free is Christ's slave" to be explained? Fourth, how can he who commanded slaves to obey their masters according to the flesh now say, "Do not become slaves of men"? Finally, what has "Let each one, brothers, remain before God in that in which he was called" to do with slavery or circumcision? For it is even contrary to the previous statement. For if we have heard, "Do not become slaves of men," how can we remain in the calling in which we were called, when many believed while having masters according to the flesh, whom they are now forbidden to serve? Further, what has remaining in the calling in which we were called to do with circumcision, when the same Apostle cries out elsewhere: "Behold, I Paul tell you that if you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing"? It remains, then, that circumcision and uncircumcision, slave and free, are to be fitted to the preceding sense and depend on what goes before. "Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on the foreskin." At the time you were called, he says, and believed in Christ, if you were called circumcised from a wife, and were celibate, do not marry a wife, that is, do not draw on the foreskin, lest you burden the freedom of circumcision and chastity with the load of marriage. Again, "Was anyone called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised." You had a wife, he says, when you believed: do not think faith in Christ a cause of separation, for God has called us in peace. "Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God." For celibacy and marriage profit nothing without works, since even faith, which belongs properly to Christians, is said to be dead if it has no works; and on that principle the virgins of Vesta and the once-married women of Juno could be numbered among the saints. "Let each remain in the calling in which he was called." Whether or not he had a wife when he believed, let him remain in that in which he was called. And so he does not so much compel virgins to marry as forbid divorces. And as he takes from those who have wives the freedom to dismiss them, so he cuts off from virgins the possibility of marrying. "Were you called as a slave? Do not let it trouble you; but even if you can become free, rather use it." Even if you have a wife, he says, and are bound to her, and render the debt, and do not have power over your own body, and (to speak more plainly) are your wife's slave, do not be sad on that account, nor sigh over your lost virginity. But even if you can find some causes of separation, so as to enjoy the freedom of chastity, do not seek your own salvation at the cost of another's ruin. Keep your wife a little while, and do not run ahead of her as she lingers: wait until she follows. If you act patiently, your spouse will be changed into a sister. "For he who was called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman; likewise he who was called free is Christ's slave." He gives the reasons why he does not want wives to be deserted. Therefore he says: I command that those who believe in Christ from paganism should not abandon marriages entered into before faith; for he who believed while having a wife is not held in God's service as much as virgins and the unmarried are, but is in a way freer, and the reins of service are slackened for him; and while he is his wife's slave, so to speak, he is the Lord's freedman. Further, he who believed without having a wife, and was called by the Lord free from the slavery of marriage, he is truly Christ's slave. How great a happiness, to be the slave not of a wife but of Christ; to serve not the flesh but the spirit! For he who cleaves to the Lord is one spirit. And lest by what he had said above, "Were you called as a slave? Do not let it trouble you; but even if you can become free, rather use it," he should seem to have slighted continence and handed us over to the service of wives, he adds a sentence to cut off all quibbling: "You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men." We have been redeemed by the most precious blood of Christ; the lamb was sacrificed for us; and, sprinkled with the hot dew of hyssop, we have boiled out all the phlegm of harmful pleasure. Since Pharaoh has died for us in baptism and his whole army has been drowned, why do we seek Egypt again, and after the manna, the food of angels, sigh for garlic and onions and melons and the meats of Egypt?

Having first discussed the married and the continent, he at last comes to virgins and says: "Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord, but I give advice, as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord to be faithful. I think therefore that this is good because of the present necessity, for it is good for a man to be so." Here our opponent revels with complete abandon, battering the wall of virginity with this as with a most powerful ram. "See," he says, "the Apostle declares that he has no command of the Lord concerning virgins; and he who had given orders with authority about husbands and wives does not dare to command what the Lord did not command. And rightly. For what is commanded is ordered; what is ordered must be done; what must be done carries a penalty if it is not done. For it is useless to command something that is left to the choice of the one commanded." If the Lord had commanded virginity, he would have seemed to condemn marriage and to take away the seedbed of humanity, from which virginity itself is born. If he had cut off the root, how could he look for the crops? If he had not first laid the foundations, how could he build the building and set on top the roof that covers everything? Mountains are overturned by the great labor of diggers; the earth is pierced almost to the depths to find gold. And when, from the tiniest grains, first by the smelting of the furnace and then by the skilled hand of the craftsman, a necklace has been made, it is not he who sifted the gold from the mud who is called blessed, but he who enjoys the beauty of the gold. Do not wonder, then, if amid the ticklings of the flesh and the incitements of vices, the life of angels is not demanded of us but taught. For where advice is given, the choice belongs to the one who offers; where there is a command, necessity binds the one who serves. "I have no command of the Lord," he says, "but I give advice, as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord." If you have no command of the Lord, why do you dare to give advice about something for which you have no order? The Apostle will answer me: "And do you want me to command what the Lord offered rather than commanded? He, the creator and potter, knowing the frailty of the vessel he had made, left virginity in the power of the hearer; and shall I, the teacher of the Gentiles, who have become all things to all men to win all, lay the burden of perpetual chastity on the necks of the weak at the very beginning of their faith? Let them first learn holidays from marriage, let them be free for prayer for a time, so that, having tasted chastity, they may desire to have always what they enjoyed for a little while." The Lord, tested by the Pharisees whether it was lawful under the law of Moses to dismiss wives, forbade it to be done at all. The disciples, considering this, said to him: "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry." He answered them: "Not all receive this word, but those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who were born so from their mother's womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have castrated themselves for the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive it, let him receive it." It is obvious why the Apostle said, "Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord": surely because the Lord had said before, "Not all receive this word, but those to whom it is given," and "He who is able to receive it, let him receive it." The president of the games sets out the prize, invites to the race, holds in his hand the palm of virginity; he points to the purest spring and cries out, "Let him who thirsts come and drink." "He who is able to receive it, let him receive it." He does not say, "Whether you will or not, you must drink and run"; but whoever wishes, whoever can run and drink, he will conquer, he will be satisfied. And so Christ loves virgins more, because they give freely what had not been commanded them. And it is a mark of greater grace to offer what you do not owe than to pay what is demanded of you. The apostles, considering the burdens of a wife, say, "If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is not expedient to marry." The Lord, approving their opinion, says: "You think rightly that it is not expedient for a man who is striving toward the kingdom of heaven to take a wife; but it is a difficult thing, and not all receive this word, but those to whom it is given. Some nature makes eunuchs, others the violence of men. I am pleased with those eunuchs whom not necessity but will has castrated. Gladly I receive into my bosom those who have castrated themselves for the kingdom of heaven, and for the sake of my service have refused to be what they were born." At the same time we must consider the sentence: "who have castrated themselves," he says, "for the kingdom of heaven." If the castrated have the reward of the kingdom of heaven, then those who have not castrated themselves cannot receive the place of the castrated. "He who is able," he says, "to receive it, let him receive it." It belongs to great faith and great virtue to be a most pure temple of God, to offer oneself wholly as a burnt offering to the Lord, and, according to the same Apostle, to be holy both in body and in spirit. These are the eunuchs who, thinking themselves dry wood because of their barrenness, hear through Isaiah that a place better than sons and daughters is prepared for them in heaven. Their type is Ebedmelech the eunuch in Jeremiah, and that eunuch of Queen Candace in the Acts of the Apostles, who for the strength of his faith obtained the name of a man. To these Clement too, the successor of the apostle Peter, whom the apostle Paul mentions, writes letters, and weaves almost his whole discourse about the purity of virginity; and after him many apostolic men, martyrs, and men illustrious for holiness and eloquence alike, whom it is very easy to know from their own writings. "For I think," he says, "that this work is good because of the present necessity." What is that necessity which, scorning the bond of marriage, seeks the freedom of virginity? "Woe to those who are pregnant and nursing in that day." Here it is not harlots or brothels that are condemned, of whose condemnation there is no doubt, but swelling wombs and the wailing of infants, and the fruits and works of marriage. "For it is good for a man to be so." If it is good for a man to be so, then it is bad for a man not to be so. "Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife." Each of us has his own boundaries: give me mine and keep yours. If you are bound to a wife, do not give her a bill of divorce. If I am loosed from a wife, I will not seek a wife. As I do not loose marriages once they are bound, so you should not bind what is loosed. At the same time we must consider the meaning of the words. He who has a wife is called a debtor, and in uncircumcision, and his wife's slave, and, what is the lot of bad slaves, bound. But he who is without a wife is first a debtor to no one, then circumcised, third free, and finally loosed.

Let us run through the rest, for the size of the volume does not allow us to linger longer on each point. "But if you take a wife, you have not sinned." It is one thing not to sin, another to do good. "And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned": not that virgin who has once dedicated herself to the service of God; for if any of these marries, she will have condemnation, because she has made void her first faith. And if he objects that this was said of widows, how much more will it hold of virgins, when it is not lawful even for those to whom it was once lawful! For virgins who marry after consecration are not so much adulteresses as incestuous. And lest by saying, "and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned," he should seem again to invite the celibate to marriage, he at once checks himself, and by adding something else weakens what he had allowed, saying: "Yet such will have tribulation of the flesh." Who are these who will have tribulation of the flesh? Those to whom he had made the concession above: "If you take a wife, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned; yet such will have tribulation of the flesh." We, ignorant of such things, thought that marriage at least had the joy of the flesh. But if those who marry have tribulation even in the flesh, in which alone they seemed to have delights, what is left for which they should marry, when there is tribulation in spirit and in soul and in the flesh itself? "But I spare you." I put forward, he says, the tribulation of the flesh, as though there were not greater reasons why you ought not. "This then I say, brothers: the time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none." I am no longer discussing virgins, of whose happiness there is no doubt; I come to the married. The time is short; the Lord is near. Even if we lived nine hundred years, like the men of old, still what would one day have an end and cease to be would have to be thought short. But now, since not so much the joy as the tribulation of marriage is short, why do we take wives whom we shall soon be forced to lose? "And those," he says, "who weep, and rejoice, and buy, and use this world, let them be as though they did not weep, rejoice, buy, use this world. For the form of this world is passing away." If the world, in which all things are enclosed, passes away, or rather the form and way of life of this world passes like a cloud, marriage too will pass among the other works of the world. For there will be no marriages after the resurrection. But if death is the end of marriage, why do we not turn necessity into will? And what is to be wrested from us against our will, why do we not offer to God in hope of reward? "He who is without a wife is anxious about the things of the Lord, how he may please God; but he who is with a wife is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided." Let us look at the differences between the cares of the virgin and of the husband. The virgin desires to please the Lord, the husband his wife; and to please his wife he is anxious about the things of the world, which will certainly pass away with the world. "And he is divided," that is, torn into many parts of anxieties and miseries. This is not the place to describe the straits of marriage and to exult in rhetorical language as in commonplaces. I think the matter has been treated more fully against Helvidius and in the book I wrote to Eustochium. Certainly Tertullian too, when he was still young, played with this subject. And my teacher Gregory of Nazianzus discussed virginity and marriage and set it out in Greek verse. Now I briefly point out that in the Latin manuscripts this passage reads: "The virgin and the woman are divided." Although this has its own sense, and I too have expounded it so, as the place required, yet it is not the apostolic truth. For the Apostle wrote, as we translated above: "He is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided"; and having settled this sentence, he passes to virgins and the continent and says: "The unmarried woman and the virgin thinks of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and spirit." Not every unmarried woman is a virgin; but she who is a virgin is certainly unmarried. Yet for elegance of expression he could have repeated the same thing in another word, "the unmarried woman and virgin"; or certainly he wished to define what an unmarried woman is, that is, a virgin, so that we should not think harlots, joined in no fixed marriage, to be unmarried. What then does the unmarried woman and virgin think of? "The things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit." Even if there were nothing else, even if no fuller reward followed the virgin, this preference alone would be enough for her: to think of the things of the Lord. And he at once teaches what this thinking is: "that she may be holy in body and spirit." For some are virgins in the flesh, not in the spirit, whose body is intact but whose soul is corrupt. But that virginity is a sacrifice to Christ whose mind no thought has stained, nor its flesh lust. "On the contrary, she who is married thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband." As he who has a wife is anxious about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, so the married woman thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband. But we are not of this world, which lies in the evil one, whose form is passing away, of which it is said to the apostles: "If you were of this world, the world would love its own." And lest perhaps he should be thought to lay the very heavy burden of chastity on the unwilling, he at once adds his reasons for persuading, and says: "But this I say for your benefit, not to cast a snare on you, but for what is seemly, and makes for serving the Lord attentively, without distraction." The Latin language does not convey the proper force of the Greek: for in what words could one express pros to euschēmon kai euparedron tō Kyriō aperispastōs? That is why, because of the difficulty of translation, it is not found at all in the Latin manuscripts. Let us use, then, what we have translated. The Apostle does not lay a snare on us, nor compel us to be what we do not wish; but he urges what is honorable and seemly, and what makes one serve the Lord attentively, and be always anxious, and await the Lord's will ready, so that when he has commanded anything, one may at once, like an active and armed soldier, fulfill what is commanded; and do this without any distraction, which, according to Ecclesiastes, has been given to the men of this world to be distracted by. "But if anyone considers that his virgin," that is, his flesh, "is growing wanton and boiling over into lust, and he cannot restrain himself, and a double necessity lies on him, either to take a wife or to fall, let him do what he wishes; he does not sin if he marries." "Let him do," he says, "what he wishes," not what he ought. He does not sin if he takes a wife; yet he does not do well if he takes one. "For he who has stood firm in his heart, having no necessity, but having power over his own will, and has judged this in his heart, to keep his virgin, does well. So then both he who joins his virgin in marriage does well, and he who does not join her does better." He had said above, pointedly and precisely, "He who takes a wife does not sin"; here, "He who keeps his virgin does well." But it is one thing not to sin, another to do well. "Turn aside," it says, "from evil, and do good." The one we turn from, the other we follow; in the latter is perfection. But lest by saying, "and he who joins his virgin in marriage does well," anyone should think that our observation does not stand, he at once diminishes this very good and overshadows it by comparison with the better, and says: "and he who does not join her does better." Unless he had been going to add "does better," he would never have said first "does well." But where there is good and better, there is not one reward for the good and the better; and where there is not one reward, there are certainly different gifts. So there is as great a difference between marriage and virginity as between not sinning and doing well; or rather, to put it more mildly, as between good and better.

Having finished the discussion of marriage and virginity, steering between the two with careful moderation in his precepts, so as to turn aside neither to the left nor to the right but to walk on the royal road and fulfill the saying, "Do not be overly righteous," he again compares monogamy with second marriage; and as he had placed marriage below the virgin, so he places second marriage below first marriage, and says: "A woman is bound for as long as her husband lives; but if her husband falls asleep, she is free; let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord. But she will be happier if she remains so, according to my advice. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God." He allows second marriages, but to those who wish them, to those who cannot contain themselves, lest, having grown wanton against Christ, they wish to marry, having condemnation because they have made void their first faith; and he allows this because many will turn back after Satan. "But they will be happier," he says, "if they remain so"; and he at once adds his apostolic authority: "according to my advice." Further, lest the Apostle's authority should seem lighter, as a man's, he added: "And I think that I too have the Spirit of God." Where he calls to continence, there the advice is not a man's but the Spirit of God's; but where he grants permission to marry, he does not name the Spirit of God, but weighs out the advice of prudence, relaxing things for each as each can bear. In this sense all those passages are to be taken: "For the woman who is under a husband is bound by the law while her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law of the husband. So then, while her husband lives, she will be called an adulteress if she is with another man; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law, so that she is not an adulteress if she is with another man." And that to Timothy: "I want the younger widows to marry, to bear children, to be mothers of households, to give the adversary no occasion for reproach; for some have already turned back after Satan," and the rest like these. For as he allows marriage to virgins because of the danger of sexual immorality, and makes excusable what is not sought for its own sake, so, to avoid the same sexual immorality, he allows second marriages to widows. For it is better to know one man, even if a second and a third, than very many; that is, it is more tolerable to have been prostituted to one man than to many. Indeed, the Samaritan woman in John's Gospel too, saying that she had a sixth husband, is rebuked by the Lord because he is not her husband. For where there is a number of husbands, there the husband, who is properly one, has ceased to be. In the beginning one rib was turned into one wife. "And the two," it says, "shall be in one flesh": not three or four; otherwise they are no longer two, if more. Lamech, the bloodthirsty murderer, was the first to divide one flesh between two wives; fratricide and second marriage alike were wiped out by the same penalty of the flood. Of the one, vengeance was taken sevenfold; of the other, seventy-seven fold. As far as they differ in number, so far they differ in guilt. How holy second marriage is appears from this, that a twice-married man cannot be chosen for the clergy. And so the Apostle says to Timothy: "Let a widow be enrolled not less than sixty years old, who has been the wife of one husband." This whole precept concerns the widows who are fed by the alms of the Church. And the age is prescribed so that only those receive the food of the poor who can no longer work. And consider at the same time that a woman who has had two husbands, even if she is old and decrepit and needy, does not deserve to receive the Church's dole. But if the bread of alms is taken from her, how much more that bread which came down from heaven, which whoever eats unworthily will be guilty of violating the body and blood of Christ!

And yet some interpret these testimonies I have set out above, in which widows are allowed to marry again if they wish, of those widows whom the faith of Christ found already bereaved of their husbands. For it would not be consistent, they say, for the Apostle to bid a woman marry another after baptism when her husband has died, when he has commanded even those who have wives to be as though they had none; and for this reason the number of wives is not fixed, because after Christ's baptism, even if she was a third or fourth wife, she is counted as the first. Otherwise, if after baptism, when the first dies, a second is taken, why not, when the second and third and fourth and fifth have died, a sixth and the rest? For it can happen, by some misfortune, or by the judgment of God cutting off repeated marriages, that a young woman takes several husbands, while an old woman is widowed of her first husband at the end of her life. The first Adam was a man of one wife; the second had none. Let those who approve second marriage show a third Adam, twice married, for them to follow. But suppose Paul did allow second marriages: by the same law he allows third and fourth too, and as often as the husband dies. The Apostle is compelled to wish many things that he does not wish. He circumcised Timothy; he himself shaved his head; he practiced the barefoot rite; he let his hair grow and cut it at Cenchreae. And yet he had rebuked the Galatians, and reproved Peter for separating himself from the Gentiles because of Jewish observances. So, just as in the other disciplines of the Church he became a Jew to the Jews, a Gentile to the Gentiles, and all things to all, to win all, so he allowed second marriage to the incontinent and did not fix the number of marriages, so that women, seeing that a second husband is allowed them after the death of their husband in the same way as a third and fourth is allowed, might blush to take another, lest they be compared to those married three and four times. For when one is exceeded, it makes no difference whether it is a second or a third, because one ceases to be monogamous. All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient. I do not condemn the twice married, nor even the thrice married, nor, if it can be said, the eight times married. I will add something more: I receive even a repentant fornicator. Whatever is equally lawful must be weighed on an equal scale.

But since he drags us to the Old Testament, and beginning with Adam comes down to Zechariah and Elizabeth, and then sets against us Peter and the other apostles, we too must run along the same tracks of the questions and show that chastity was always preferred to the work of marriage. Of Adam and Eve, this must be said: that before their offense in paradise they were virgins, but after the sin, and outside paradise, marriage came at once. Next, that the Apostle interprets this very saying, "For this reason a man shall leave his father and his mother and shall cleave to his wife, and the two shall be in one flesh," and at once adds: "This mystery is great; but I speak of Christ and the Church." Christ is a virgin in the flesh, monogamous in the spirit; for he has one Church, of which the same Apostle says: "Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church." If Christ loves the Church in holiness, in chastity, without any stain, let husbands too love their wives in chastity, and let each know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honor, not in the passion of desire, like the Gentiles who do not know God. "For God has not called us to uncleanness but to sanctification": putting off the old man with his deeds, and putting on the new, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of its Creator, where there is not male and female, Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian and Scythian, slave and free, but Christ is all in all. The image of the Creator does not have the coupling of marriage. Where the difference of sex is taken away, and we put off the old man and put on the new, there we are reborn into Christ the virgin, who was both born of a virgin and reborn through a virgin. As for the saying, "Increase and multiply and fill the earth," it was necessary first to plant the forest and let it grow, so that there might be something that could later be cut down. At the same time we must consider the force of the words "fill the earth." Marriage fills the earth; virginity, paradise. And this too must be observed, at least according to the Hebrew truth: that when Scripture, on the first, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth days, on completing the works of each, said, "And God saw that it was good," on the second day it omitted this altogether, leaving us to understand that the number two is not good, because it divides from unity and prefigures the covenants of marriage. That is why in Noah's ark all the animals that go in by twos are unclean. An odd number is clean. And yet in the number two another mystery is shown: that not even among beasts and unclean birds is second marriage approved. For the unclean go in by twos, and the clean by sevens, so that after the flood Noah might have something of the odd number to offer to God at once.

And if Enoch was translated, and Noah was preserved in the flood, I do not think Enoch was translated because he had a wife, but because he first called on God and believed in the Creator, about which the apostle Paul teaches most fully in the Letter to the Hebrews. Further, Noah, who was being preserved as a second root of the human race, had of course to be kept with his wife and sons. And yet in this there is a mystery of the Scriptures. That ark, according to the apostle Peter, was a type of the Church, in which eight souls were saved. When Noah enters it, both he and his sons are separated from their wives; but when he goes out onto the land, the pairs are joined; and what had been separated in the ark, that is, in the Church, is united in the life of the world. At the same time, if the ark had many rooms and nests, and was of two and three stories, and held different beasts, with dwellings larger or smaller according to the kind of animal, I think that the variety of rooms prefigured the variety of the Church.

As for his objection to us that in God's second blessing permission was given to eat meat, which had not been granted in the first, let him know that, just as, according to the Savior's word, divorce was not given from the beginning but was allowed to the human race through Moses because of the hardness of our hearts, so the eating of meat was unknown until the flood. But after the flood, as quails were given to the murmuring people in the desert, so the sinews and rankness of flesh were thrust into our teeth. The Apostle, writing to the Ephesians, teaches that God purposed in the fullness of times to sum up all things and bring them back to their beginning in Christ Jesus, the things in heaven and the things on earth. That is why the Savior himself says in John's Apocalypse: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end." From the first creation of humankind we neither ate meat nor gave bills of divorce, nor were our foreskins cut off as a sign. On this course we came to the flood. But after the flood, with the giving of the law, which no one could fulfill, meat was given to be eaten, divorce was allowed to hardness of heart, and the knife of circumcision was applied, as though God's hand had created more in us than was necessary. But after Christ came at the end of the times, and turned the Omega back to the Alpha, and drew the end back to the beginning, we are not permitted to give a bill of divorce, nor are we circumcised, nor do we eat meat, as the Apostle says: "It is good not to drink wine and not to eat meat." For wine too was dedicated together with meat after the flood.

What shall I say of Abraham, who, as he asserts, was thrice married, and who received the sign of faith in circumcision? If we imitate the number of his wives, let us imitate his circumcision too; for he is not to be followed in part and rejected in part. Further, Isaac, the husband of Rebecca alone, prefigures the Church of Christ and reproves the wantonness of second marriage. And if Jacob had two pairs of wives and concubines, and our opponent will not accept that bleary-eyed Leah, ugly and fruitful, prefigured a type of the synagogue, while Rachel, beautiful and long barren, signified the mystery of the Church, let him know that Jacob did this at the time when he was among the Assyrians, and in Mesopotamia was serving Laban, a very harsh master. But when he wished to enter the Holy Land, and on Mount Gilead set up the heap of witness, at which the master of Mesopotamia had found nothing in his baggage, swearing that he would never return to the place where he had served; and when, having wrestled with the angel at the brook Jabbok, he began to limp, and the broad sinew of his thigh withered, and at once he received the name Israel; then that once beloved wife, for whom he had served, is killed near Bethlehem, where the Lord, the herald of virginity, was to be born, by the son of sorrow; and the partnerships of Mesopotamia die in the city of the Gospel.

But I wonder why he set before us Judah and Tamar as an example, unless perhaps he delights in harlots too; or Onan, who was slain because he grudged his brother seed, as though we approved of any emission of seed without the work of children. It is clear about Moses that he would have been in danger at the lodging place had not Zipporah, whose name means "bird," circumcised her son and cut off the foreskin of marriage with the knife of the Gospel. This is indeed the Moses who, when he had seen the great vision and the angel, or the Lord, speaking in the bush, could not approach him at all until he had loosed the strap of his shoe and cast off the bonds of marriage. Nor is this surprising in the friend, prophet, and lawgiver of God, when the whole people, about to approach Mount Sinai and hear the word, were commanded to sanctify themselves for three days and to abstain from their wives. We know that this (though I am confusing the order of the history by putting it out of place) was also said to David by the priest Ahimelech when David was fleeing: "If the young men are clean from women." And he answered: "Since yesterday and the day before." For they could not eat the bread of the Presence, as the body of Christ, if they were rising from the beds of their wives. And in passing we must consider what he said, "If the young men are clean from women": namely, that in comparison with the purity of the body of Christ all intercourse is unclean. In the law too it is commanded that the high priest marry none but a virgin, and not take a widow. If the condition of virgin and widow is the same, why is the one accepted and the other rejected? And a priest's widowed daughter is ordered to stay in her father's house and not know a second marriage. If a priest's virgin sister dies, he is ordered to go to her funeral as to that of his father and mother; but if she is married, she is disregarded as a stranger. He who has married a wife, and he who has planted a vineyard, as it were the offshoots of children, is forbidden to go out to war; for the slave of a wife cannot serve in the army of the Lord. And the laver in the tabernacle is cast from the mirrors of the fasting women, as from the purest bodies of virgins; and within, in the sanctuary, the cherubim, the mercy seat, the ark of the covenant, the table of the Presence, the lampstand, and the censer are of the purest gold. For silver could not be brought into the Holy of Holies.

Why do I linger over Moses, when my purpose, dictating hastily and quickly, is to touch each point briefly and draw some outlines for understanding? I will pass on to Joshua the son of Nun, who was earlier called Ause, or, as is more correctly read in the Hebrew, Hosea, that is, "savior." For he, according to the Letter of Jude, saved the people of Israel and led them out of Egypt and brought them into the land of promise. As soon as this Jesus came to the Jordan, the waters of marriage, which had always flowed under the law, dried up and stood still; and the whole people crossed over with dry and bare feet and came to Gilgal, and there were circumcised a second time. If we take this according to the letter, it cannot stand at all. For if we had a double foreskin, or if the skin once cut away grew again, a second circumcision would rightly have its place. But now this is signified: that Jesus circumcised with the knife of the Gospel the people who had come through the desert; and he circumcised them with a knife of stone, so that what was prefigured before in a few, in the son of Moses, might be fulfilled in all under Jesus. And the foreskins themselves, heaped together in one pile and buried and covered with earth, and the reproach of Egypt taken away, and the name of the place, Gilgal, which means "revelation," show that while the people walked through the desert in uncircumcision, their eyes were blinded. Let us look at what follows as well. After the circumcision of the Gospel and the consecration of the twelve stones in the place of revelation, the Passover is at once celebrated: the lamb is sacrificed for them, and they eat the food of the holy land. Jesus goes out; the Prince of the army meets him holding a sword, that is, showing either that he fights for the circumcised people, or that he cuts through the glue of marriage. And just as it had been commanded to Moses, so too it is commanded to this man: "Loose your shoe, for the place on which you stand is holy ground." Because the army of the Lord was thus armed with the priestly trumpets, the world is overthrown, under the type of Jericho, as by the preaching of the Gospel. And to pass over countless things (for my purpose now is not to open all the mysteries of the Old Testament), the five kings who formerly reigned in the land of promise and resisted the army of the Gospel are defeated, Jesus fighting. I think this is clear in its meaning: that before the Lord led his people out of Egypt and circumcised them, sight, smell, taste, hearing, and touch reigned, and everything was subject to them as to rulers. When they fled to the cave of the body and to a dark place, Jesus, entering the body itself, killed them, so that they might be slain by the very thing through which they had reigned before.

But now it is time to raise the standard of Joshua's chastity. Moses is written to have had a wife. And both our Lord and the Apostle interpret Moses as the law: "They have Moses and the prophets." And: "Sin reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression." No one doubts that in both testimonies Moses signifies the law. As, then, we read that Moses, that is, the law, had a wife, show me that Joshua the son of Nun had either a wife or sons; and if you can show it, I will confess myself beaten. And certainly he received the most beautiful place in the land of Judea in the division, and he dies, not in the number twenty, which is always unlucky in the Scriptures (in which Jacob served, and Joseph was sold, and which Esau loved, receiving in it certain gifts), but in the ten, of whose praise we have often spoken; and he is buried in Timnath-serah, that is, in a most perfect principality, or in the number of a new covering, to signify the flocks of virgins covered by the Savior's help, on Mount Ephraim, that is, on the fruitful mountain, north of Mount Gaash, which means "commotion": for "Mount Zion, the sides of the north, the city of the great king," which is always exposed to envy and says in each temptation: "But my feet were almost moved." And when the book named after him has ended with the burial of Joshua, he is described again in the book of Judges as living and rising again, and his works are proclaimed by way of recapitulation, and we read: "Joshua sent the people away, and the children of Israel went each to his inheritance to possess the land." And: "The people served the Lord all the days of Joshua," and the rest. And at once it is added: "And Joshua the son of Nun, the servant of the Lord, died, a hundred and ten years old." Moses, on the other hand, only saw the land of promise and could not enter; and he died in the land of Moab, and the Lord buried him in the valley in the land of Moab opposite the house of Phogor, and no man has known his tomb to this day. Let us compare the burials of the two. Moses dies in the land of Moab, Joshua in the land of Judea. The one is buried in the valley opposite the house of Phogor, which means "disgrace" (for properly in the Hebrew language Priapus is called Phogor); the other on Mount Ephraim, north of Mount Gaash. And in the simple words of the divine Scriptures there is always a more majestic sense. Because among the Jews glory lay in births and childbearing, and "cursed was the barren woman who had no seed in Israel," and "blessed was he who had seed in Zion and household in Jerusalem," and among the greatest blessings was reckoned, "Your wife shall be like a fruitful vine on the sides of your house; your children like olive shoots around your table": therefore his tomb is described as set in a valley opposite the house of the idol which is properly consecrated to lust. But we who serve as soldiers under Joshua as our leader do not know to this day where Moses is buried. For we despise Phogor and all its disgrace, knowing that those who are in the flesh cannot please God. And the Lord before the flood also said: "My spirit shall not remain in these men, because they are flesh." That is why Moses at his death is mourned by the people of Israel, but Joshua, as one who will live, is not mourned. For marriage ends in death; virginity begins to be crowned after death.

He brings forward Samson too, and does not consider that the Nazirite of the Lord was once shorn by a woman. Though he bears a type of the Savior, in that he loved a harlot from among the Gentiles, the Church, and in dying killed many more of the enemy than he had killed while alive, yet he gives no examples of marital chastity. And certainly he is the one of Jacob's prophecy who, while carried along at the speed of a galloping horse, was struck by a serpent and fell backward. Why he listed Deborah and Barak and the wife of Heber the Kenite I do not understand at all, since it is one thing to weave together leaders of wars and the order of history, another to signify any figures of marriage, which do not appear in them at all. Further, his preferring Jephthah the father to the tears of his virgin daughter tells in our favor. For we too praise not so much virgins of the world as those who are virgins for Christ's sake. And the father is censured by many of the Hebrews for a rash vow, since he said: "If you will indeed deliver the children of Ammon into my hands, whoever comes out of my house to meet me when I begin to return in peace from the children of Ammon shall be the Lord's, and I will offer him as a burnt offering." "If a dog," they say, "if an ass had met him, what would he have done?" From this they hold that it was by God's dispensation that he who had vowed without forethought should feel the error of his vows in his daughter's death. And if Samuel, brought up in the tabernacle, married a wife, what does this prejudice virginity? As though even today very many priests do not have marriages, and the Apostle does not describe a bishop as the husband of one wife, having children in all chastity! At the same time we must know that Samuel was a Levite, not a priest, not a high priest. That is why his mother made him an ephod bad, that is, a linen shoulder garment, which is properly the dress of the Levites and of the lower order. That is why in the Psalms he is named not among the priests but among those who call on the name of the Lord: "Moses and Aaron among his priests, and Samuel among those who call on his name." For Levi begot Kohath, Kohath begot Amminadab, Amminadab begot Korah, Korah begot Assir, Assir begot Elkanah, Elkanah begot Zuph, Zuph begot Toah, Toah begot Eliel, Eliel begot Jeroham, Jeroham begot Elkanah, Elkanah begot Samuel. And no one doubts that the priests were born of the stock of Aaron, Eleazar, and Phinehas. Since they too had wives, they would rightly be set against us if, led by the error of the Encratites, we maintained that marriages are to be rejected; and if our High Priest after the order of Melchizedek were not without father, without mother, that is, without marriage. And indeed Samuel reaps great fruit from his children: since he himself pleased God, he begot such as displeased the Lord! And if he objects to us Boaz and Ruth to prove second marriage, let him know that in the Gospel, for a type of the Church, even Rahab the harlot is counted in the line of the Lord's ancestors.

Further, as to his boast that David bought a wife with two hundred foreskins, let him know that David had very many other wives as well, that he took back Michal the daughter of Saul, whom her father had given to another, and that in his old age he was warmed by the embraces of the Shunammite girl. I do not say this because I dare to detract in any way from holy men, but because it is one thing to live under the law, another under the Gospel. He killed Uriah the Hittite and became an adulterer with Bathsheba. And because he was a man of blood (not, as many think, because of wars, but because of the murder), he was forbidden to build the temple of the Lord. But for us, if we cause one of the least to stumble, and if we say "Raca" to a brother, and do not look rightly, it is better that a millstone be tied around our neck; and we shall be liable to Gehenna, and adultery will be reckoned against us for a look alone. He passes to Solomon, through whom wisdom itself sang; and since he calls him a married man and dwells on his praises, I wonder why he does not add also that from the Song of Songs: "There are sixty queens and eighty concubines, and maidens without number"; and that from Third Kings, that he had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, and countless others. These indeed are the women who turned his heart away from the Lord. And yet, before he had many wives and fell into the vices of the flesh, at the beginning of his reign and of his youth, he built the temple to the Lord. For each one is judged not by what will come but by what is present. But if Solomon's examples please him, he will not be content with being married twice or three times; unless he has seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, he will not be able to fulfill his type and merit. I beg you, reader, and I remind you of this often, to know that I speak as necessity compels me. I do not detract from those who lived under the law; they served their times and conditions, and fulfilled that sentence of the Lord, "Increase and multiply and fill the earth"; and, what is greater, they provided types of things to come. But for us, to whom it is said, "The time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none," something else is prescribed, and virginity is dedicated by the virgin Savior.

How foolishly he has put Elijah and Elisha in the catalogue of the married is clear without my saying anything. For if John the Baptist came in the spirit and power of Elijah, and John is a virgin, he certainly came not only in his spirit but also in his chastity of body. Further, as to what can be cited of Hezekiah (though he, with his usual stupidity, did not see it), that after his life was restored and extended by fifteen years he said, "From now on I will beget children," let him know that this is not found in the Hebrew books, but instead it reads: "The father shall make your truth known to the children." Nor is it surprising that Huldah, the wife of Shallum, a prophetess, was consulted by Josiah king of Judah when the captivity was already near and the wrath of the Lord was dripping on Jerusalem; for this is the rule of the Scriptures, that when holy men are lacking, women are praised to the reproach of men. As for Daniel, it is superfluous to speak, since the Hebrews hold to this day that he and the three young men were eunuchs, on the basis of that sentence of God which Isaiah speaks to Hezekiah: "And of your sons who will be born of you they will take, and make them eunuchs in the king's house." And again we read in Daniel: "And the king told Ashpenaz, the chief of the eunuchs, to bring in some of the children of the captivity of Israel, of the royal seed and of the nobles, youths in whom there was no blemish, handsome in appearance and skilled in wisdom." And they argue: if Daniel and the three young men were chosen from the royal seed, and Scripture foretold that some of the royal seed would be eunuchs, these were the ones made eunuchs. But if he objects what is said in Ezekiel, that Noah, Daniel, and Job could not deliver sons and daughters in a sinful land, the answer is that it is said hypothetically. For at that time Noah and Job, who we know lived many ages before, were not alive. And the sense is: if such and such men were in a sinful land, they could not deliver their sons and daughters, because the righteousness of the father will not deliver the son, nor will the sin of one be imputed to another; for the soul that sins, it shall die. And this too must be said: that Daniel, according to the history of his book, was taken captive with King Jehoiachin at the time when Ezekiel too was led into captivity. How then could he have sons when he was still a boy? And after three years were completed he was brought into the king's service. And lest anyone think that Ezekiel was already speaking of Daniel as a man, not a boy: "It happened," he says, "in the sixth year," that is, of King Jehoiachin, "in the sixth month, on the fifth of the month"; and, "I was sitting in my house, and the elders of Judah were sitting before me." And on the same day it is said to him, "If Noah and Daniel and Job were there." Daniel was therefore still a boy, and known to the people, either for his interpretation of the king's dreams or for the deliverance of Susanna and the killing of the elders. And it is clearly proved that at the time when these things were said of Noah, Daniel, and Job, Daniel was still a boy and could not have had sons and daughters to deliver by his righteousness. So much for the law.

He comes to the Gospel and sets before us Zechariah and Elizabeth, Peter and his mother-in-law, and with his usual folly does not understand that these too ought to be numbered among those who served the law. For the Gospel does not exist before the cross of Christ; it was dedicated by his passion and blood. By this rule Peter and the other apostles (to grant him, for the moment, more than is needed) did indeed have wives, but wives they had taken at a time when they did not know the Gospel. Taken up afterward into the apostleship, they leave the duty of marriage. For when Peter, speaking for the apostles, says to the Lord, "Behold, we have left everything and followed you," the Lord answered him: "Amen I say to you, there is no one who has left house or parents or brothers or wife or children for the sake of the kingdom of God who will not receive much more in this age, and in the age to come eternal life." But if he objects to us, to prove that all the apostles had wives, "Do we not have the right to take about women or wives" (since gynē in Greek means both) "as the other apostles, and Cephas, and the brothers of the Lord?", let him add also what is in the Greek manuscripts: "Do we not have the right to take about sisters, women or wives?" From this it appears that he spoke of other holy women, who according to Jewish custom ministered to their teachers from their own means, as we read was done for the Lord himself. For the order of the words also indicates this: "Do we not have the right to eat and drink, or to take about sisters, women?" Where eating and drinking and the supply of expenses come first, and women who are sisters are added, it is plain that we must understand not wives but, as we said, those who ministered from their own means. This too is written in the old law of that Shunammite woman, who used to receive Elisha and set before him a table and bread and a lampstand and the rest. Or certainly, if we take gynaikas as "wives," not "women," the added word "sisters" takes away the wives and shows that they were sisters in the spirit, not spouses. And yet, apart from the apostle Peter, it is not plainly reported of the other apostles that they had wives; and since it is written of one and the rest are passed over in silence, we ought to understand that those of whom Scripture indicates nothing of the kind were without wives. And yet he who set against us Zechariah and Elizabeth, Peter and his mother-in-law, should know that of Zechariah and Elizabeth John was born, that is, a virgin from marriage, the Gospel from the law, chastity from wedlock, so that the virgin Lord might be both announced and baptized by a virgin prophet. And we can say of Peter that he had a mother-in-law at the time when he believed, and no longer had a wife, although in the Circuits both his wife and his daughter are read of. But now our whole contest is about the canon. And since he has appealed to the apostles, on the ground that the leaders of our discipline and the chiefs of Christian doctrine were not virgins, let us grant for the moment that they were not virgins (for this cannot be proved except of Peter); let him know that these are the apostles of whom Isaiah prophesies: "Unless the Lord of hosts had left us a seed, we would have been like Sodom and would have been made like Gomorrah." Those, then, who were from the Jews could not have in the Gospel the virginity they had lost in Judaism. And yet John, one of the disciples, who is said to have been the youngest among the apostles, and whom the faith of Christ found a virgin, remained a virgin; and that is why he is loved more by the Lord and reclines on the breast of Jesus. And what Peter, who had had a wife, does not dare to ask, he asks John to ask. And after the resurrection, when Mary Magdalene announced that the Lord had risen, both ran to the tomb, but John got there first. And when they were in the boat fishing on the lake of Gennesaret, Jesus was standing on the shore, and the apostles did not know whom they were seeing; only the virgin recognizes the virgin and says to Peter, "It is the Lord." Again, after Peter heard the sentence that he would be girded by another and led where he did not wish, and his passion on the cross had been foretold, and he said, "Lord, what about this man?", not wishing to leave John, with whom he had always been joined, the Lord said to him: "What is it to you if I wish him to be so?" From this the saying went out among the brothers that that disciple would not die. From this it is shown that virginity does not die, nor does it wash away the stains of marriage with the blood of martyrdom, but remains with Christ, and its falling asleep is a passing over, not a death. But if he obstinately maintains that John was not a virgin, while we have said that virginity was the cause of the special love, let him explain, if he was not a virgin, why he was loved more than the other apostles. "But," you say, "the Church is founded on Peter." Although in another place the same is done on all the apostles, and all receive the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and the strength of the Church is established on them equally, yet one is chosen among the twelve for this reason, that by appointing a head the occasion of schism might be removed. But why was John not chosen, the virgin? Deference was paid to age, because Peter was older; lest one still a young man, almost a boy, be preferred to men of advanced age; and lest the good master, who ought to remove from his disciples the occasion of strife, and who had said to them, "My peace I give you, my peace I leave you," and "Whoever wishes to be greater among you, let him be the least of all," should seem to give cause for envy against the young man whom he loved. And that we may know that John was then a boy, the histories of the Church teach most plainly that he lived until the reign of Trajan, that is, he fell asleep in the sixty-eighth year after the Lord's passion, as we too have briefly noted in the book On Illustrious Men. Peter is an apostle, and John is an apostle; the one a husband, the other a virgin. But Peter is only an apostle; John is apostle, evangelist, and prophet. Apostle, because he wrote to the churches as a teacher; evangelist, because he composed a book of the Gospel, which, apart from Matthew, none of the other twelve apostles did; prophet, for on the island of Patmos, to which he had been banished by the emperor Domitian for his witness to the Lord, he saw the Apocalypse, containing countless mysteries of things to come. And Tertullian reports that at Rome he was put into a jar of boiling oil and came out purer and fresher than he went in. And his Gospel itself differs much from the others. Matthew begins to write as if of a man: "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham"; Luke from the priesthood of Zechariah; Mark from the prophecy of Malachi the prophet and of Isaiah. The first has the face of a man, because of the genealogy; the second the face of a calf, because of the priesthood; the third the face of a lion, because of the voice of one crying in the wilderness: "Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight." But our John, like an eagle, flies to the heights and reaches the Father himself, saying: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God; he was in the beginning with God," and the rest. Virginity explained what marriage could not know. And to include much in a few words, and to show what privilege John had, or rather virginity in John: the virgin mother is commended by the virgin Lord to the virgin disciple.

But we sweat with useless labor. For our opponent objects to us the Apostle's sentence and says: "Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, fell into transgression. Yet she will be saved through the bearing of children, if they continue in faith and love and holiness with sobriety." Let us consider why and from where the Apostle came to this sentence: "I want men to pray in every place, lifting up holy hands without anger and disputing." Then accordingly he gives women precepts for living, and says: "Likewise women too, in becoming dress, adorning themselves with modesty and chastity, not with braided hair or gold or pearls or costly clothing, but as befits women who profess godliness, with good works. Let a woman learn in silence with all submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence." And lest the condition of the woman should seem harsh, bringing her into the service of her husband, he recalls the ancient law and goes back to the original example: that Adam was made first, then the woman from his rib; that the devil could not deceive Adam, but Eve; that after offending God she was at once made subject to the man, and her turning was toward her husband; and that she who has once been joined in marriage and brought into the condition of Eve may wipe out the ancient error by the bearing of children, on condition, however, that she instruct those children in the faith and love of Christ, and in holiness and chastity. For we should read not "sobriety" (as is wrongly found in the Latin manuscripts) but "chastity," that is, sōphrosynē. See, then, how you are defeated by this testimony too, and how what you thought was for marriage you are compelled to understand as for virginity. For if the woman is saved in the bearing of children, and the number of offspring is the salvation of mothers, why did he add, "if the children continue in love and holiness with chastity"? The woman, then, will be saved if she bears those children who will remain virgins; if what she herself lost she gains in her children, and makes up for the loss and rot of the root by flower and fruit.

Above, in passing, where our opponent had set before us Solomon, the man of many wives, who built the temple of God, I had answered briefly, so as to run through the remaining questions. Now, lest he cry out that both he and the other patriarchs, prophets, and holy men under the law have been dishonored by us, let us set out the view on marriage of this very man who had many wives and concubines. For no one can know better what a wife or a woman is than one who has suffered it. He says, then, in Proverbs: "A foolish and bold woman becomes in want of bread." Of what bread? Surely of that which came down from heaven. And he at once adds: "The earthborn perish with her and run into the depth of hell." Who are the earthborn who perish with her? Surely those who follow the first Adam, who is of the earth, and not the second, who is from heaven. And again in another place: "As a worm in wood, so an evil wife destroys her husband." But if you assert that this is said of bad wives, I too will answer you briefly: what necessity lies on me to fall into doubt whether the woman I marry will be good or bad? "It is better," it says, "to live in a desert land than with a quarrelsome and angry wife." How rare it is to find a wife without these faults, he knows who has married a wife. That is why the sublime orator Varius Geminus put it well: "He who does not quarrel is a bachelor." "It is better to live in a corner of the roof than with a railing wife in a shared house." If a house shared by husband and wife lifts the wife into pride and contempt of her husband, how much more if the wife is the richer and the husband lives in her house! She begins to be not a wife but a mistress, and if she takes offense at her husband, he must move out. "Dripping drives a man out of his house on a winter's day; so too a railing woman from his own house." For by constant quarrels and daily chatter she makes his house leak away, and drives him out of his dwelling, that is, out of the Church. That is why the same Solomon commands above: "Son, do not flow away." And the Apostle to the Hebrews: "Therefore we must attend more closely to what is said, lest perhaps we flow away." Who would keep silent about what is written in a riddle? "The leech had three daughters, beloved with love, but they did not satisfy her, and the fourth is not content to say 'Enough': hell, and the love of a woman, and the earth that is not satisfied with water, and fire does not say 'It is enough.'" The leech is the devil; the devil's daughters, beloved with love, are those that cannot be satisfied with the blood of the slain: hell, the love of a woman, the earth parched and burning. Here it is not the harlot, not the adulteress who is spoken of; but the love of woman in general is accused, which is always insatiable, which when quenched is rekindled, and after plenty is again in want, and makes the manly mind effeminate and allows it to think of nothing except the passion it suffers. We read something similar in the following parable: "By three things the earth is moved, and the fourth it cannot bear: if a slave reigns, and a fool is filled with bread, and a hateful wife has a good husband, and a maidservant drives out her mistress." See, here too a wife is placed among the greatest of evils. And if you answer, "But a hateful wife," I will tell you what I said above: this very danger is grave in my own case. For he who marries a wife is in doubt whether he is marrying a hateful or a lovable one. If he marries a hateful one, she cannot be borne. If a lovable one, her love is compared to hell, to the parched earth, and to burning.

Let us come to Ecclesiastes, and set down a few testimonies from it too. "There is a time for everything, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to give birth and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to uproot what has been planted." We gave birth under the law with Moses; let us die in the Gospel with Christ. We planted in marriage; let us uproot by chastity what was planted. "A time to embrace and a time to be far from embracing; a time to love and a time to hate; a time for war and a time for peace." And at the same time he warns us not to prefer the law to the Gospel, nor to think the purity of virginity equal to marriage, saying: "Better is the end of a speech than its beginning." And at once he adds: "Do not say, 'What has happened, that the former days were better than these?' For you have not asked wisely about this." And he gives the reason why the later days are better than the former: "For wisdom is good with an inheritance." For under the law death followed the wisdom of the flesh, killing it; in the Gospel an eternal inheritance awaits the wisdom of the spirit. "Behold, this I found, says Ecclesiastes: one man among a thousand I found, but a woman among all these I did not find. But this I found: that God made man upright, and they have sought out evil thoughts." He says he found an upright human being. Consider the force of the word: in "human being" both man and woman are contained. "And a woman among all these," he says, "I did not find." Let us read the beginning of Genesis, and we shall find that Adam, that is, "human being," is the name of both male and female. Since, then, we were created good and upright by God, we ourselves by our own fault have slipped into worse things; and what had been upright in us in paradise was corrupted when we went out of paradise. But if you object that before they sinned the sex of male and female had been distinguished, and that they could have been united without sin, what would have happened is uncertain. For we cannot know God's judgments, or prejudge his sentence by our own will. What did happen is plain: those who remained virgins in paradise were joined after they were driven out of paradise. Or what harm would it have done, if paradise admits marriage and there is no difference between married woman and virgin, for them to have been united in paradise too, before? They are driven out of paradise; and what they did not do there, they do on earth, so that from the very beginning of the human race paradise dedicated virginity, and earth marriage. "Let your garments be white at all times." The everlasting whiteness of garments is the purity of virginity. "In the morning we sowed our seed, and in the evening let us not cease." We who served marriage under the law, let us serve virginity in the Gospel.

I pass to the Song of Songs, and what our opponent thinks is wholly for marriage I will show contains the mysteries of virginity. Let us hear what the bride says before her bridegroom comes to earth, suffers, enters the underworld, and rises again: "We will make you likenesses of gold with ornaments of silver, while the king is on his couch." Before the Lord rose again and the Gospel shone, the bride had not gold but likenesses of gold. But the silver she promises to have in marriage she had varied and distinguished in widows, the continent, and the married. Then the bridegroom answers the bride and teaches her that the shadow of the old law has passed and the truth of the Gospel has come: "Arise, come, my neighbor, my bride, for behold, the winter has passed, the rain has gone away." This is about the Old Testament. Again, about the Gospel and virginity: "The flowers have appeared on the earth; the time of pruning has come." Does it not seem to you to say the same as the Apostle: "It remains that those who have wives be as though they had none"? And more plainly of the proclamation of chastity: "The voice of the turtledove," it says, "has been heard in our land." The turtledove, a most chaste bird, always dwelling on the heights, is a type of the Savior. Let us read the naturalists, and we shall find that it is the nature of the turtledove, if it loses its mate, not to join another; and we shall understand that second marriage is rejected even by dumb birds. And at once the turtledove says to the turtledove: "The fig tree has put forth its green figs," that is, the precepts of the old law have fallen, "and the vines in flower," from the Gospel, "have given their fragrance." That is why the Apostle too says: "We are the good fragrance of Christ." "Arise, come, my neighbor, my bride, and come. You are my dove in the shelter of the rock, near the outer wall; show me your face, let me hear your voice, for your voice is sweet and your face is lovely." While you covered your face with Moses, and the veil was on the law, I did not see your face nor deign to hear your voice, saying: "Even if you multiply your prayers, I will not hear you." But now, with face unveiled, contemplate my glory, and shelter in the outer wall of the firmest rock. Hearing this, the bride opens the mysteries of chastity: "My kinsman is mine, and I am his, who feeds among the lilies," that is, among the most radiant choirs of virgins. Do you want to know what kind of bed our true Solomon, our peacemaker, has, what kind of armed guards? "Behold," it says, "Solomon's bed; sixty mighty men around it, of the mighty men of Israel, all holding spears and trained in war, each man's sword on his thigh." Those around Solomon have a sword on the thigh, like that judge Ehud, the ambidextrous, who killed the very fat enemy, wholly given to the flesh, cutting off all pleasures. "I will go," he says, "to the mountain of myrrh," that is, to those who have put their bodies to death, "and to the hill of Lebanon," to the purest flocks of virgins, "and I will say to my bride: You are all beautiful, my love, and there is no stain in you." That is why the Apostle too says: "that he might present the Church to himself holy, having no stain or wrinkle." "Come from Lebanon, my bride, come from Lebanon. You will come and pass over from the beginning of faith, from the top of Senir and Hermon, from the dens of lions, from the mountains of leopards." Lebanon means leukasma, that is, "whiteness." Come, then, most radiant bride, of whom it is said elsewhere, "Who is this who comes up made white?" and pass through the way of this world, from the beginning of faith, and from Senir, which means "god of the lamp," according to what we read in the Psalm, "Your word is a lamp to my feet, Lord, and a light to my paths"; and from Hermon, that is, "consecration"; and flee the dens of lions and the mountains of leopards, which cannot change their spots. Flee, he says, the dens of lions, flee the pride of demons, so that after you have been consecrated to me I may say to you: "You have wounded my heart, my sister, my bride; you have wounded my heart with one of your eyes, with one ornament of your neck." What he says is of this kind: I do not reject marriage; you have also the left eye, which I gave you for the weakness of those who cannot see what is right. But the right eye of virginity pleases me more; if it is blinded, the whole body is in darkness. And lest we should think he means the love of the flesh and bodily marriage, he at once excludes this sense and says: "You have wounded my heart, my sister, my bride." Where there is the name of sister, every suspicion of shameful love is excluded. "How beautiful are your breasts with wine," of which he had also said above, "My kinsman is mine and I am his; he will dwell between my breasts," in the ruling part of the heart, where the word of God has its lodging. "How beautiful are your breasts with wine." What is that wine which makes the bride's breasts most beautiful and fills them with the milk of chastity? Surely that of which the Bridegroom speaks in what follows: "I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, my neighbors, and drink and be drunk, my brothers." That is why the apostles too were said to be full of new wine: of new wine, it says, not of old, because new wine is put into new wineskins; and they did not walk in the oldness of the letter but in the newness of the spirit. This is the wine which, when it has made young men and girls drunk, at once makes them thirst for virginity, and they belch out the surfeit of chastity; and that prophecy of Zechariah is fulfilled, which, at least according to the Hebrew truth, prophesies of the virgins of the Church: "Its streets shall be filled with boys and girls playing. For what is its good, and what its beauty, but the grain of the elect and the wine that makes virgins grow?" These are the virgins of whom it is written in the forty-fourth Psalm: "Virgins shall be brought to the king after her; her companions shall be brought to you with gladness and rejoicing; they shall be brought into the temple of the king."

What is shut and sealed bears the likeness of the Mother of the Lord, mother and virgin. That is why in the Savior's new tomb, hewn in the hardest rock, no one was laid either before or after. And yet this perpetual virgin is the mother of many virgins. For there follows: "Your shoots are a paradise of pomegranates with the fruit of apples." In the pomegranates and apples is signified the harmony of all virtues in virginity. "My kinsman is white and ruddy": white in virginity, ruddy in martyrdom. And because he is ruddy and white, it is at once added: "His throat is sweetness, and he is all desire." The virgin Bridegroom, praised by the virgin bride, praises the virgin bride in turn and says to her: "How beautiful your steps have become in sandals, daughter of Amminadab," which means "of a people offering itself freely." For virginity is voluntary, and therefore the steps of the Church are praised in the beauty of chastity. This is not the time, in the manner of a commentary, to lay open all the mysteries of virginity in the Song of Songs, for I do not doubt that even these will make the fastidious reader wrinkle his nose.

Let Isaiah speak the mystery of our hope and faith: "Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel." I know that the Jews usually object that in Hebrew the word almah does not mean "virgin" but "young woman." And indeed a virgin is properly called bethulah, while a young woman or girl is called not almah but naarah. What, then, does almah mean? A hidden virgin, that is, not merely a virgin, but a virgin with emphasis; for not every virgin is hidden and set apart from the chance sight of men. Indeed Rebecca too in Genesis, because of her great chastity and the type of the Church which she signified in her virginity, is written almah, not bethulah, as can be clear from the words of Abraham's servant which he speaks in Mesopotamia: "And he said: Lord God of my master Abraham, if you prosper the way on which I go, behold, while I stand by the spring of water, the virgin who comes out to draw water, and to whom I say, 'Give me a little water to drink from your jar,' and who answers, 'Both drink, and I will draw for your camels': she shall be the wife whom the Lord has prepared for my master's son." For in the place where he says, "the virgin who comes out to draw water," the Hebrew has almah, that is, a secluded virgin, guarded by the great care of her parents. Or else let them show me where married women too are called by this word, and I will confess my ignorance. "Behold, a virgin shall conceive in the womb and bear a son." If virginity is not preferred to marriage, why did the Holy Spirit not choose a married woman or a widow? For at that time there was Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher, of remarkable chastity, always devoting herself to prayers and fasts in the temple of God. If only a way of life, good works, and fasts, without virginity, earned the coming of the Holy Spirit, she too could have been the mother of the Lord. Let us run on to the rest. "The virgin daughter of Zion," it says, "has scorned you and despised you." Her whom he had called daughter he also called virgin, lest, if he had named her only daughter, you should think her married. This is the virgin daughter to whom it is said elsewhere: "Rejoice, barren one who do not bear; break out and cry, you who are not in labor; for many are the children of the desolate, more than of her who has a husband." This is she of whom God speaks through Jeremiah, saying: "Will a bride forget her ornament, or a virgin her breastband?" Of her there is a great miracle in the same prophecy, that a woman shall encompass a man, and the womb of a virgin enclose the parent of the universe.

"Granted," he says, "that the condition of marriage and of virginity differ; what can you say to this? If a virgin and a widow have been baptized and have remained so, what difference will there be between them?" What we said a little while ago about Peter and John, Anna and Mary, may serve in the present place. For if there is no difference between a virgin and a widow who have been baptized, because baptism makes a new person, then on the same terms harlots and prostitutes, if they have been baptized, will be made equal to virgins. For if past marriages do no harm to a baptized widow, then the past pleasures of harlots and their bodies exposed to public lust will obtain the rewards of virginity after the washing. It is one thing to join to God a mind most pure and stained by no memory; another to remember the embraces of a man and a shameful necessity, and to imitate in memory what you do not do in body. Jeremiah, who was sanctified in the womb and known in his mother's womb, enjoys this privilege because he was destined for the blessedness of virginity. And when all were taken captive, and even the vessels of the temple were plundered as the king of Babylon laid it waste, he alone is free from the enemy, knows nothing of the wrongs of captivity, and received provisions from the victors; and Nebuzaradan, whom Nebuchadnezzar had given no orders about the Holy of Holies, was given orders about Jeremiah. For this is the true temple of God, and these the Holy of Holies, which are consecrated to the Lord by the purity of virginity. By contrast Ezekiel, who was held captive in Babylon, who had seen the storm coming from the north and the whirlwind sweeping all things away, says: "My wife died in the evening, and in the morning I did as I had been commanded." For the Lord had foretold to him that on that day his mouth would be opened, and he would speak and be silent no longer. Note carefully: as long as his wife lived he did not have freedom to warn the people. The wife dies, the marriage bond is loosed, and without any fear he is always in the prophetic office. "For he who was called free is truly the slave of Christ." I do not deny that widows are blessed who remain so after baptism; nor do I detract from the merit of those who persevere with their husbands in chastity. But just as these have a greater reward with God than married women serving the marital duty, so let them too accept calmly that virginity is preferred to them. For if a late chastity, after the pleasures of the body have foamed away, raises them above married women, why should they not know themselves to be below perpetual chastity?

"In vain," he says, "you say these things, since the Apostle appoints bishops, presbyters, and deacons who are husbands of one wife and have children." Just as the Apostle says of virgins that he has no command, and yet gives advice as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord, and does this throughout that whole discussion so as to prefer virginity to marriage, and urges what he does not dare to command lest he seem to cast a snare and impose more weight than human nature can bear, so too in arranging the order of the Church, because the Church was being established raw from among the Gentiles, he gives lighter precepts to those newly believing, lest, frightened, they could not bear them. Indeed the apostles and elders too send letters from Jerusalem, that no further burden be laid on those who believed from among the Gentiles than that they abstain from idolatry and sexual immorality and from blood and things strangled; and, as to little ones and infants, they give milk to drink, not solid food. They give no command about continence, say nothing of virginity, do not call them to fasting, nor do they say what is addressed to the apostles in the Gospel: not to have two tunics, nor a bag, nor money in their belts, nor a staff in the hand, nor sandals on the feet; or certainly that: "If you would be perfect, go and sell all you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me." For if that young man who boasted that he had done everything belonging to the law went away sad on hearing this, because he had many possessions, and the Pharisees mocked this saying of the Lord, how much more did that great multitude of Gentiles, for whom the highest virtue was not to steal others' goods, have no need of a precept about chastity and perpetual continence: people to whom it was written that they should abstain from idols and from sexual immorality, and among whom sexual immorality was reported, and such sexual immorality as is not even among the Gentiles! But the very choice of a bishop tells in my favor. For it does not say, "Let a bishop be chosen who marries one wife and begets children," but "who has married one wife, and has children subject in all discipline." Certainly you admit that a man cannot be a bishop who begets children during his episcopate; otherwise, if he is detected, he will not be held as a husband but condemned as an adulterer. Either permit priests to perform the works of marriage, so that virgins and husbands are the same; or, if priests may not touch their wives, they are holy in this, that they imitate virginal chastity. And this too must be added. If a layman, or any of the faithful, cannot pray unless he abstains from the marital duty, the priest, who must always offer sacrifices for the people, must always pray. If he must always pray, then he must always abstain from marriage. For even under the old law, those who offered sacrifices for the people not only were not in their houses but were purified, separated from their wives for a time, and did not drink wine and strong drink, which usually provoke lust. Married men are chosen for the priesthood, I do not deny it; because virgins are not as many as priests are needed. Just because in an army the strongest men should be chosen, will the weaker therefore not be taken, since not all can be strong? If an army consisted only of strength and not also of the number of soldiers, the weaker would be rejected. As it is, men of the second and third rank of strength are taken, so that the army may be filled up in crowd and number. "And how," you will say, "is it that often in priestly ordination a virgin is passed over and a married man taken?" Perhaps because he does not have the other works befitting virginity; or he is thought a virgin and is not; or his virginity is ill spoken of; or certainly his very virginity breeds pride in him, and while he applauds himself for bodily chastity alone, he neglects the other virtues. He does not care for the poor; he is too eager for money. It sometimes happens that a gloomy face, a knitted brow, a gait like a procession of floats, offends the people; and because they find nothing to blame in his life, they hate only his bearing and gait. Many are chosen not out of love for themselves but out of hatred of another. In many cases mere simplicity wins the vote, and others' prudence and shrewdness are opposed as if they were malice. Sometimes the judgment of the people and the crowd errs; and in approving priests each favors his own manners, so that he looks not so much for a good candidate as for one like himself. It sometimes happens that married men, who are the greater part of the people, applaud married men as if applauding themselves, and think themselves not inferior to virgins in this, if they prefer a married man to a virgin. I will say something which I shall perhaps say to the offense of many; but the good will not be angry with me, because the consciousness of sin will not prick them. Sometimes this happens also through the fault of the bishops, who choose for the clergy not the better men but the shrewder, and think the simpler and innocent unfit; or bestow the offices as if of an earthly army on relatives and kinsfolk, or obey the bidding of the rich. And what is worse than these, they give the rank of cleric to those by whose services they have been won over. Otherwise, if according to the Apostle's sentence there will be no bishops but married men, the Apostle himself ought not to have been a bishop, who said, "I wish all to be as I am." And John will be thought unworthy of this rank, and all virgins and the continent, with whom, as with most beautiful gems, the necklace of the Church is adorned. Bishop, presbyter, and deacon are not names of merits but of offices. Nor is it said, "If anyone desires the office of bishop, he desires a good rank," but "he desires a good work," because one set in the higher order can, if he will, have occasion to exercise the virtues.

"A bishop, then, must be irreproachable," so that he is enslaved to no vice; "the husband of one wife," who has had one wife, not who has one; "sober," or, as is better said in the Greek, "vigilant," that is, nēphaleon; "chaste," for that is what sōphrona means; "orderly," both in chastity and in conduct; "hospitable," so that he imitates Abraham and with strangers, or rather in strangers, receives Christ; "a teacher," for it profits nothing to enjoy the consciousness of virtues unless he can also instruct the people entrusted to him, so as to be able to exhort in doctrine and refute those who contradict; "not given to wine," because he who is always in the Holy of Holies and offers sacrifices will not drink wine and strong drink, for in wine is debauchery. Let a bishop so drink that it is not known whether he has drunk. "Not a striker," that is, one who does not strike the consciences of individuals; for the apostolic word is not describing a boxer, but instructing a bishop what he must not do. Now on the other side it teaches what he should do: "but gentle, not quarrelsome, not covetous, ruling his own house well, having children subject with all chastity." See how great a chastity is required in a bishop: if his children are unchaste, he himself cannot be a bishop, and he offends God by the same fault by which Eli the high priest offended him, who did indeed rebuke his sons, but because he did not cast out the offenders, fell backward and died before the lamp of God went out. "Likewise the women must be chaste," and the rest. In every rank and sex chastity holds the first place. You see, then, that a bishop, presbyter, and deacon are not blessed because they are bishops or presbyters or deacons, but if they have the virtues of their names and offices. Otherwise, if a deacon is holier than his bishop, he will not be worse in Christ's sight because he is lower in rank. Or will Stephen the deacon, who was the first to be crowned with martyrdom, be less in the kingdom of heaven than many bishops, and than Timothy and Titus, whom I do not dare to put below him, nor yet above? As in the legions and the army there are generals, tribunes, centurions, skirmishers and light-armed troops, the common soldier and the companies, but when battle is joined the names of rank count for nothing and courage alone is sought; so in this field and battle in which we fight against demons, not names but deeds are sought; and under the true commander, Christ, more glorious is not the more noble but the braver.

But you will say: "If all were virgins, how would the human race stand?" I will pay you in the same coin. If all were widows or continent in marriage, how would the stock of mortals be propagated? On this reasoning nothing at all will exist, lest something else cease to exist. For example: if all were philosophers, there would be no farmers. Why speak of farmers? There would be no orators, no lawyers, no teachers of the other arts. If all were princes, who would be a soldier? If all were head, of what would they be called head, when the other members were lacking? Are you afraid that if more people seek virginity, the brothels will cease, the adulteresses will cease, and infants will not cry in the cities and villages? Every day the blood of adulterers is shed, adulteries are condemned, and amid the very laws, the axes, and the tribunals, burning lust reigns. Do not fear that all will become virgins. Virginity is a difficult thing, and therefore rare, because difficult: "Many are called, few are chosen." To begin belongs to very many; to persevere, to few. That is why the reward of those who persevere is great. If all could be virgins, the Lord would never have said, "He who is able to receive it, let him receive it"; nor would the Apostle have been fearful in urging it: "Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord." "And why," you will say, "were the genital organs created, and why were we so formed by the all-wise Maker that we feel a mutual ardor and long for natural union?" We are in danger from the shame of answering, and, as between two rocks, the Symplegades, as it were, of necessity and modesty, we suffer shipwreck on one side or the other, either of modesty or of our case. If we answer the proposition, we are covered with shame. If shame imposes silence, we shall seem to give ground and give the opponent occasion to strike. Yet it is better to fight, as they say, with eyes shut, like the blindfolded gladiators, than not to repel the aimed darts with the shield of truth. I could indeed say: as the hinder part of the body, and the passage through which the excrement of the bowels is discharged, is removed from the eyes and placed as it were behind the back, so this part too, which is below the belly, was made by God to discharge the fluids and drink with which the veins of the body are watered. But since the organs themselves, and the structure of the genitals, and the distinction between us and women, and the receptacles of the womb, made to receive and nourish the offspring, proclaim the difference of sex, I will answer briefly: then let us never cease from lust, lest we carry such members in vain! For why should a husband abstain from his wife? Why should a chaste widow persevere, if we were born only to live like cattle? Or what harm will it do me if another man lies with my wife? For as it is the office of the teeth to chew and pass what is chewed into the belly, and he commits no crime who gives my wife bread, so, if it is the office of the genitals always to enjoy their nature, let another's strength overcome my weariness, and let chance lust quench my wife's most burning appetite, so to speak. But what does the Apostle mean by exhorting to continence, if it is against nature? What of the Lord himself, who teaches the different kinds of eunuchs? Certainly the Apostle, who calls us to his own chastity, must hear consistently: "Why do you carry a male member, Paul? Why are you distinguished from the female sex by beard, hair, and the other qualities of your members? Why do your breasts not swell, your hips not widen, your chest not narrow? Your voice is rougher, your speech fiercer, your brow shaggier. In vain you have all these things of men if you do not use the embrace of women." I am compelled to say something and become a fool; but you have compelled me to dare to speak. Our Lord and Savior, who, though he was in the form of God, deigned to take the form of a servant, becoming obedient to the Father unto death, even death on a cross: what need was there for him to be born with those members which he was not going to use? He was even circumcised, to show his sex. Why did he, by his love, castrate John the apostle and John the Baptist, whom he had caused to be born men? We, then, who believe in Christ, let us follow Christ's examples. "And if we had known him according to the flesh, now we no longer know him according to the flesh." Certainly in the resurrection the substance of our bodies will be the same that we now use, though greater in glory. For the Savior too, after the underworld, had the very body in which he was crucified, so much so that he showed the hands pierced with the nails and the wound in the side. Further, if he entered through shut doors, which the nature of human bodies does not allow, then we must deny that Peter and the Lord had true bodies, because they walked on the water, which is against nature. "In the resurrection of the dead they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be like the angels." What others will be later in heaven, virgins have begun to be on earth. If the likeness of the angels is promised us (and among the angels there is no difference of sex), either we shall be without sex, as the angels are, or certainly, as is clearly proved, rising in our own sex, we shall not perform the function of sex.

But what are we doing with arguments, and why do we want to overcome the opponent's propositions with clever replies? "The old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new." I will run through the sayings of the apostles; and as I added brief little explanations to the examples of Solomon for ease of understanding, so now too I will go over the examples of Christian chastity and continence, and of many testimonies make, as it were, one body, so as to leave out nothing that concerns chastity and yet avoid the tedium of excessive length. Among other things the apostle Paul writes to the Romans: "What fruit, then, did you have at that time in the things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death. But now, set free from sin and made slaves of God, you have your fruit in sanctification, and the end, eternal life." I think the end of marriage too is death. But the fruit of sanctification, which belongs to virginity or to continence, is repaid with eternal life. And then: "So, my brothers, you too have been put to death to the law through the body of Christ, that you may belong to another, who rose from the dead, that we may bear fruit for God. For when we were in the flesh, the passions which came through the law worked in our members to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the law of death, in which we were held, so that we serve in newness of the spirit and not in oldness of the letter." "When," he says, "we were in the flesh," and not in newness of the spirit but in oldness of the letter, we did the things of the flesh and bore fruit for death. But now, because we have died to the law through the body of Christ, let us bear fruit for God, that we may belong to him who rose from the dead. And in another place too, after saying beforehand, "I know that the law is spiritual," and after discussing at length the violence of the flesh, which often drives us to do what we do not want, he finally added: "Wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? The grace of God through Jesus Christ our Lord." And again: "So then I myself with the mind serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin." And: "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh. For the law of the spirit in Christ Jesus has set me free from the law of sin and death." And more plainly in what follows he teaches that Christians do not walk according to the flesh but according to the spirit, saying: "For those who are according to the flesh mind the things of the flesh; but those who are according to the spirit, the things of the spirit. For the prudence of the flesh is death, but the prudence of the spirit is life and peace; because the prudence of the flesh is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor can it be. And those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh but in the spirit, if indeed the Spirit of God dwells in you," and the rest, up to the place where he says: "So then, brothers, we are debtors not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the flesh, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God." If the prudence of the flesh is enmity against God, and those who are in the flesh cannot please God, I think that those who serve the marital duty love the prudence of the flesh and are in the flesh. Drawing us back from this and joining us to the spirit, the Apostle then says: "I beseech you, brothers, by the mercy of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be reformed in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect. For I say, through the grace given to me, to all who are among you: not to think more highly than one ought to think, but to think with a view to chastity" (not "to sobriety," as is wrongly read in the Latin manuscripts; but "to think," he says, "with a view to chastity," for in Greek it is written eis to sōphronein). Let us consider the Apostle's sentence: "Be reformed," he says, "in the newness of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect." What he says is of this kind: God indeed allows marriage, allows second marriage, and, if need be, prefers even a third marriage to sexual immorality and adultery. But we who ought to present our bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, our reasonable service, should consider not what God allows but what he wills, so that we may prove what is the will of God, good and acceptable and perfect. Therefore what he allows is neither good nor acceptable nor perfect. And he gives the reasons why he urges this: "Knowing the time, that it is now the hour for us to rise from sleep. For now our salvation is nearer than when we believed. The night is far gone, and the day is at hand." And at the end: "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh in its desires." The will of God is one thing, his indulgence another. That is why, writing to the Corinthians, he says: "I, brothers, could not speak to you as to spiritual people, but as to carnal, as to little ones in Christ. I gave you milk to drink, not food; for you were not yet able, and even now you are not able; for you are still carnal." He who is natural and does not receive the things of the Spirit of God (for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually judged) is nourished not with the food of perfect chastity but with the crude milk of marriage. "As by a man came death, so by a man the resurrection of the dead. As in Adam we all die, so in Christ we shall all be made alive." We served the old Adam under the law; let us serve the new Adam in the Gospel. "For the first man Adam became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. The first man was from the earth, earthly; the second man from heaven, heavenly. As was the earthly, so are those who are earthly; and as is the heavenly, so are those who are heavenly. As we have borne the image of the earthly, let us also bear the image of the heavenly. But this I say, brothers, that flesh and blood cannot possess the kingdom of God, nor will corruption possess incorruption." This is so clear that no explanation can make it plainer: "Flesh and blood," he says, "cannot possess the kingdom of God, nor corruption incorruption." If corruption belongs to all intercourse, while incorruption belongs properly to chastity, marriage cannot possess the rewards of chastity. "For we know that if the earthly house of this dwelling is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. In this we groan, longing to be clothed over with our dwelling which is from heaven." For we long to depart from the body and to dwell with Christ; that is why we strive most earnestly, whether in the body or out of the body, to please God. And to set out more fully what kind of people he did not want them to be, he teaches in another place, saying: "For I betrothed you to one husband, to present a chaste virgin to Christ." And if you wish to refer this to the whole Church of believers, and to include in this betrothal to Christ married women, the twice married, widows, and virgins, this too tells for us. For while he invites all to chastity and to the reward of virginity, he shows that virginity is better than all the other grades. And again to the Galatians: "By the works of the law," he says, "no flesh will be justified." Marriage too is among the works of the law; that is why in the law those who have no children are cursed. And if marriages are allowed even in the Gospel, it is one thing to grant indulgence to weakness, another to promise rewards to virtues.

I too will say to my marriage-mongers, who after chastity and long continence go into heat for intercourse and run riot like cattle: "Are you so foolish that, having begun in the spirit, you are now being perfected in the flesh? Have you suffered so much in vain?" When the Apostle loosens the knots of continence for some and gives the reins to those who are running, he does it because of the weakness of the flesh. Writing against it he says again: "Walk by the spirit, and you will not fulfill the desire of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh." There is no need now to speak of the works of the flesh, because it is long, and whoever wishes can easily take them from the Apostle's letter. I will speak only of the spirit, whose fruits are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, gentleness, continence. Continence, like a most solid foundation and a lofty roof, supports and protects all the virtues of the spirit. "Against such there is no law. And those who are Christ's have crucified their flesh with its vices and lusts. If we live by the spirit, let us also walk by the spirit." We who have crucified our flesh with Christ, with its passions and desires, why do we long to do again the things of the flesh? "Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap. He who sows in his flesh will from the flesh reap corruption; but he who sows in the spirit will from the spirit reap eternal life." I think that he who has a wife, as long as he comes together again lest Satan tempt him, sows in the flesh and not in the spirit. And he who sows in the flesh (it is not I but the Apostle who says it) reaps corruption. "God the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him." "We walked in the lusts of the flesh, doing its will and that of our thoughts, and were children of wrath like the rest. But now he has raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," that we may put off, according to our former way of life, the old man, which is corrupted according to the desires of error, and that blessing may be fitted to us with which he concludes the mystical Letter to the Ephesians: "Grace be with all of you who love the Lord in incorruption." "Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also await the Savior, our Lord Jesus Christ, who will transfigure the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory." "Whatever things, then, are true, whatever are chaste, whatever are just," whatever belong to chastity, to these let us cling, these let us follow. "Christ has reconciled us to God the Father in his body through death, and has presented us holy and blameless and without any reproach before himself; in whom also we were circumcised with a circumcision not made with hands, in putting off the body of the flesh, but with the circumcision of Christ, buried with him in baptism, in which we also rose with him." "If, then, we have risen with Christ, let us seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God; let us set our minds on things above, not on things on the earth. For we have died, and our life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ our life appears, then we too will appear with him in glory." "No one serving as a soldier of God entangles himself in worldly affairs, so that he may please him who chose him." "For the grace of God our Savior has appeared to all people, training us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires, and to live chastely and justly and godly in the present age."

The day would fail me if I wished to recall all the Apostle's precepts on chastity. These are the things of which the Lord spoke to the apostles: "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. But when that Spirit of truth comes, he will teach you all truth." After the cross of Christ, at once in the Acts of the Apostles the one house of Philip the evangelist produces a team of four virgin daughters, so that Caesarea, in which the Church from the Gentiles had been dedicated through the centurion Cornelius, might also furnish examples of virgin girls. And though the Lord said in the Gospel, "The law and the prophets were until John," these, because they were virgins, are reported to have prophesied even after John. For those who had shone with the brightness of virginity could not be held by the law of the Old Testament. Let us pass to James, who was called the brother of the Lord, a man of such holiness and justice, and of perpetual virginity, that Josephus too, the historian of the Jews, reports that Jerusalem was overthrown because of his murder. He, the first bishop of the Church of believers from the Jews at Jerusalem, to whom Paul went with Titus and Barnabas, says in his letter: "Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning. Of his own will he begot us by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." The virgin teaches virginity mystically. Every perfect gift comes down from above, where there are no marriages; and it comes down not from just anyone, but from the Father of lights, who says to the apostles, "You are the light of the world"; with whom there is no difference of Jew or Gentile, nor does that shadow which was in the law press upon those who believed from the nations; but he begot us by the word, and by the word of truth, because a shadow, an image, and a kind of likeness of the truth went before in the law, "that we should be firstfruits of his creatures." And as he, the firstborn from the dead, raised in himself all who were dead, so he, the virgin, dedicated in himself, the virgin, the firstfruits of his virgins. Let us consider also what Peter thinks of the calling of the Gentiles: "Blessed," he says, "be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has begotten us again to a hope of life through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are guarded by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time." Where an inheritance is proclaimed incorrupt and undefiled and unfading, prepared in heaven and reserved for the last time, and the hope of eternal life, when they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, there in other words the privileges of virginity are described. For in what follows he teaches the same: "Therefore, girding up the loins of your mind, being perfectly watchful, hope for the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ. As children of obedience, do not be conformed to the former desires of your ignorance, but, according to him who called you, the Holy One, be holy yourselves in all your conduct; for it is written, 'Be holy, for I am holy.'" For we were not redeemed with corruptible gold and silver, but with the precious blood of the spotless Lamb, Jesus Christ, so that we may purify our souls in obedience to the truth, born again not of corruptible intercourse but of incorruption, through the word of the living and abiding God; and like living stones we may be built into a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices through Christ our Lord. "For we are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people of possession." Christ died for us in the flesh. Let us arm ourselves with the same way of life as Christ, since he who has suffered in the flesh has ceased from sin, so that we may spend the rest of our time in the flesh not in the desires of men but in the will of God. For the time past suffices for us, when we walked in debauchery and desires and the other vices. He has given us the great and precious promises of virginity, so that through it we may become partakers of the divine nature, fleeing the corrupting lust that is in the world. "The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation, and to keep the unrighteous to be punished on the day of judgment, especially those who walk after the flesh in the lust of defilement and despise authority, bold and willful." For these, like irrational beasts, are bent on the belly and lust, blaspheming, and they will be corrupted in their own corruption and receive debauchery as the wages of iniquity: men who count unrighteousness, filth, and stains a delight, thinking of nothing but pleasures; who have eyes full of adultery and insatiable lust, and deceive souls not yet strong in the love of Christ. For they speak swelling words and easily ensnare the untaught with the allurements of the flesh, promising them freedom when they themselves are slaves of vices, debauchery, and corruption. For each is subject to the passion by which he is overcome. "For if, having escaped the defilements of the world through the knowledge of our Savior Jesus Christ, they are again overcome by what they had overcome before, the last state has become worse for them than the first. And it was better for them not to have known the way of righteousness than, after knowing it, to turn back and abandon the holy commandment delivered to them." And in them that most true proverb is fulfilled: "The dog has returned to its vomit, and the washed sow to wallowing in the mire." I did not wish to set out the whole passage of Peter's second letter, so as not to be long, but only to show by the prophecy of the Holy Spirit that the teachers and the heresy of this time were foretold. Indeed he marks them still more plainly, saying: "For in the last days scoffers will come, leading astray, walking according to their own desires," and the rest.

The apostolic word described Jovinian speaking with swollen cheeks and weighing out inflated words, promising freedom in heaven when he himself is a slave of vices and debauchery, a dog returning to his vomit. For while he boasts of being a monk, yet after the dirty tunic, the bare feet, the coarse bread, and water to drink, he betakes himself to white clothes, sleek skin, honeyed wine and elaborate meats, the sauces of Apicius and Paxamus, the baths too and the frying-pan and the cookshops; so it is plain that he prefers earth to heaven, vices to virtues, belly to Christ, and thinks the purple of his complexion the kingdom of heaven. And yet let this handsome monk, fat, sleek, whitened, always strutting like a bridegroom, either marry a wife, to prove virginity equal to marriage; or, if he does not marry, he argues against us in words in vain, since in deed he is with us. John too agrees with the same words: "Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world is the desire of the flesh and the desire of the eyes and the pride of this life, which is not of the Father but of the world. And the world passes away, and its desire; but he who does the will of God abides forever." "I write you a new commandment, which is most true both in Christ and in us, because the darkness has passed away and the light already shines." And again: "Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not yet appeared what we shall be. But we know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. And everyone who has this hope makes himself chaste, as he too is chaste." "In this our love is perfected, that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world." The Letter of Jude too signifies something similar: "hating even the garment defiled by the flesh." Let us read John's Apocalypse, and there we shall find the Lamb on Mount Zion, and with him a hundred and forty-four thousand who are sealed, having his name and the name of his Father written on their foreheads, who sing a new song, and no one can sing that song except those who were bought from the earth. "These are those who did not defile themselves with women, for they remained virgins. These follow the Lamb wherever he goes; for they were bought from among men as firstfruits for God and the Lamb, and in their mouth no lie was found, and they are without blemish." From each of the tribes, except the tribe of Dan, in place of which the tribe of Levi is put, twelve thousand sealed virgins are said to be going to believe, who were not defiled with women. And lest we should think this was said of those who have not known harlots, he at once added: "for they remained virgins." From this he shows that all who did not remain virgins are defiled in comparison with the purest and angelic chastity, and with our Lord Jesus Christ himself. These are they who sing the new song, which no one can sing but a virgin. These are the firstfruits of God and the Lamb, and without blemish. If virgins are the firstfruits of God, then widows and those continent in marriage will come after the firstfruits, that is, in the second and third rank. Nor could the lost people be saved before it had offered such sacrifices of chastity to God and reconciled the spotless Lamb with the purest victims. It would be endless to expound the mystery of the Gospel of the ten virgins, five foolish and five wise. I say only this now: that as virginity alone does not save without the other works, so all works without virginity, purity, continence, chastity are imperfect. Hence what our opponent objects, that the Lord was at Cana of Galilee and celebrated the festivities of a wedding when he turned the water into wine, cannot hinder us at all. For I will answer this very briefly: he who was circumcised on the eighth day, and for whom a pair of turtledoves and two young pigeons were offered on the day of purification, approved, among other things, the Jewish custom before he suffered, so as not to seem to give them grounds for killing him justly, as one destroying the law and condemning nature. And yet this too tells for us. For he who came once to a wedding taught that one should marry once. And it could harm virginity only if we did not put marriage in the third rank, after virginity and the chastity of widowhood. But as it is, since it belongs to heretics to condemn marriages and despise God's creation, whatever he says in praise of marriage we gladly hear. For the Church does not condemn marriages but subordinates them; does not reject them but regulates them; knowing, as we said above, that in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware, some for honor and some for dishonor; and that whoever cleanses himself will be a vessel of honor, useful and prepared for every good work.

We have given enough and more than enough examples of Christian chastity and angelic virginity from the divine books. But since I have understood from my opponent's treatises that we are challenged also to the wisdom of the world, on the ground that this kind of life was never approved in the world and our religion has brought forth a new doctrine against nature, I will run briefly through the Greek, Latin, and barbarian histories, and show that virginity has always held the first place in chastity. The stories tell that Atalanta, the virgin of Calydon, always in the hunt, always in the woods, loved not swelling wombs and the nausea of pregnancy but free and chaste virtue. The famous poet describes Harpalyce too, the Thracian virgin; and Camilla, queen of the Volsci, whom Turnus, to whose help she had come, wishing to praise her, had nothing more to say than to call her virgin: "O glory of Italy, virgin!" Chalcioecus too, the daughter of Leos, a perpetual virgin, is written to have delivered her country from plague by a voluntary death; and the blood of the virgin Iphigenia to have calmed adverse winds. Why should I mention the Sibyls, the Erythraean and the Cumaean and the eight others? For Varro holds that there were ten, whose distinction is virginity, and the reward of virginity, prophecy. And if in the Aeolic dialect the Sibyl is called theoboulē, it is rightly written that virginity alone knows the counsel of God. We read too of Cassandra and Chryseis, prophetesses of Apollo, and of the virgins of Juno. And there have been countless priestesses of the Taurian Diana and of Vesta. One of these, Minucia, was buried alive on suspicion of unchastity: an unjust penalty, I think, unless violated virginity were held a great crime. Certainly how great an honor the Roman people always gave to virgins appears from this, that consuls and generals, and those riding in triumph and bringing back trophies from conquered nations, and every rank of dignity, used to give way to them on the road. Claudia, a Vestal virgin, when she had come under suspicion of unchastity, and the image of the Idaean Mother was stuck in the shallows of the Tiber, is said, to prove her chastity, to have drawn with her girdle the ship that many thousands of men had been unable to pull. "Yet it would have been better for her," says the uncle of the poet Lucan, "if what happened had been the ornament of a chastity already proved rather than the defense of a doubtful one." Nor is this surprising among men, when the error of the Gentiles imagined Minerva and Diana as virgin goddesses, and among the twelve signs of heaven, by which they think the world turns, placed the Virgin. A great insult to marriage, that not even among the scorpions and centaurs and crabs and fishes and goat-horned creatures did they join a wife and husband! When the Thirty Tyrants of Athens had killed Phidon at a banquet, they ordered his virgin daughters to come to them and be stripped like harlots, and to sport with shameless gestures on the floor stained with their father's blood. For a little while they hid their grief; then, when they saw the guests drunk, going out as if for the needs of nature, they embraced one another and threw themselves into a well, to preserve their virginity by death. The virgin daughter of Demotion, chief of the Areopagites, on hearing of the death of her betrothed Leosthenes, who had stirred up the Lamian war, killed herself, declaring that although she was untouched in body, yet if she were forced to take another, she would be taking a second husband, since she had married the first in mind. The Spartans and Messenians long had friendship with each other, so much so that for certain rites they even sent virgins to one another. Once, then, when the Messenians tried to violate fifty Lacedaemonian virgins, of so great a number not one consented to the outrage, but all most willingly died for their chastity. For this reason a grave and very long war was stirred up, and after a long time Mamertia was overthrown. Aristoclides, tyrant of Orchomenus, fell in love with a Stymphalian virgin, who, when her father was killed, fled to the temple of Diana and held fast to her image; and since she could not be torn away by force, she was stabbed on the spot. Because of her death all Arcadia was moved with such grief that it took up war publicly and avenged the virgin's death. Aristomenes the Messenian, a most just man, when the Lacedaemonians had been defeated and were once celebrating the nocturnal rites called the Hyacinthia, carried off fifteen virgins from the dancing choirs, and, fleeing at a rapid pace all night, got out of the Spartans' territory. And when his companions wished to violate them, he warned them as much as he could not to do it, and at last killed some who would not obey, keeping the rest in check by fear. The girls, afterwards ransomed by their relatives, when they saw Aristomenes accused of murder, did not return to their homeland until, falling at the knees of the judges, they saw the defender of their chastity acquitted. With what words are the daughters of Scedasus at Leuctra in Boeotia to be praised? It is related that in their father's absence they received two passing young men by the right of hospitality, who, having indulged much in wine, did violence to the virgins in the night. Unwilling to survive the loss of their chastity, they fell by each other's wounds. It is just not to be silent about the Locrian virgins either, who, though they were sent to Ilium according to custom for about a thousand years, none of them ever gave occasion for any tale of foul rumor or of violated virginity. Who could pass over in silence the seven virgins of Miletus, who, when the onslaught of the Gauls was laying everything waste, escaped disgrace by death, so as not to suffer anything indecent from the enemy, leaving to all virgins the example that to honorable minds chastity is of more concern than life? Nicanor, after Thebes was conquered and overthrown, was overcome by love of one captive virgin. Seeking marriage with her and her willing embraces, which a captive surely ought to have wished, he learned that to chaste minds virginity is more than a kingdom; and, weeping and mourning, the lover held her, slain by her own hand. Greek writers tell also of another Theban virgin whom a Macedonian enemy had violated: that she hid her grief for a little while, and afterwards cut the throat of the violator of her virginity as he slept, and killed herself with the sword, so that she would neither live after losing her chastity nor die before she had avenged herself.

Among the Gymnosophists of India the authority of this belief is handed down, as from hand to hand, that a virgin gave birth to Buddha, the founder of their doctrine, from her side. Nor is this surprising among barbarians, when most learned Greece imagined that Minerva was born from the head of Jupiter and Father Liber from his thigh. Speusippus too, Plato's sister's son, and Clearchus in his Praise of Plato, and Anaxilides in the second book of his Philosophy, say that Perictione, Plato's mother, was overpowered by an apparition of Apollo, and they think the prince of wisdom was born in no other way than of a virgin's childbearing. Timaeus too writes that Pythagoras's virgin daughter presided over a choir of virgins and instructed them in the teachings of chastity. Diodorus the Socratic is said to have had five daughters, dialecticians, of remarkable chastity, of whom Philo, the teacher of Carneades, writes a very full history. And lest the power of Rome should reproach us that the Lord and Savior was born of a virgin, they believe the founders of their city and nation were born of the virgin Ilia and Mars.

My hurrying discourse has touched on these things about the virgins of the world, running through many histories. I will come to married women who were unwilling to survive their husbands when they died or were killed, lest they be forced to know second unions, and who wonderfully loved their only husbands; so that we may know that second marriage is condemned even among the pagans. Dido, the sister of Pygmalion, gathered a great weight of gold and silver, sailed to Africa, and there founded the city of Carthage; and when she was sought in marriage by Iarbas, king of Libya, she put off the marriage for a while until she had founded the city. Not long after, having built a pyre in memory of her former husband Sychaeus, she preferred to burn rather than to marry. A chaste woman founded Carthage, and the same city in turn ended in the praise of chastity. For the wife of Hasdrubal, when the city was taken and burning, seeing that she was about to be captured by the Romans, seized her little sons on either side and leapt down into the fire of her house below.

Why should I speak of the wife of Niceratus, who, unable to bear the wrong done to her husband, took her own life, so as not to endure the lust of the Thirty Tyrants whom Lysander had imposed on conquered Athens? Artemisia too, the wife of Mausolus, is said to have been of remarkable chastity. Though she was queen of Caria and is praised by noble poets and historians, she is extolled above all for this, that she always loved her dead husband as if he were alive, and built a tomb of wonderful size, so that to this day all costly tombs are called Mausolea after his name. Teuta, queen of the Illyrians, who for a long time ruled very brave men and often broke the Romans, certainly owed this to the wonder of her chastity. The Indians, like nearly all barbarians, have very many wives. Among them there is a law that the most beloved wife be burned with her dead husband. So they contend among themselves for the husband's love, and the highest ambition of the competitors, and the testimony of chastity, is to be judged worthy of death. So the winner, in her former dress and adornment, lies down beside the corpse, embracing and kissing it, and despises the fire set beneath her for the glory of chastity. I think a woman who dies thus does not seek a second marriage. That famous Alcibiades, the disciple of Socrates, when the Athenians had been defeated, fled to Pharnabazus, who, having taken a price from Lysander, the chief of the Lacedaemonians, ordered him to be killed. And when he had been strangled and his head cut off and sent to Lysander as proof that the murder had been done, the rest of his body lay unburied. His concubine alone, then, against the command of a most cruel enemy, among strangers and with danger at hand, paid the funeral rites, ready to die for the dead man whom she had loved alive. Let matrons, and at least Christian matrons, imitate the faithfulness of concubines, and let free women show what a captive kept.

Strato, the petty king of Sidon, wishing to stab himself with his own hand so as not to be made sport of by the Persians who were approaching (whose treaty he had neglected for alliance with the king of Egypt), was held back by fear, and looking around at the sword he had seized, awaited the enemy's coming in terror. His wife, seeing that he was about to be captured at any moment, wrested the scimitar from his hand and pierced his side; and having laid out the corpse according to custom, she threw herself, dying, upon it, so as not to endure another's intercourse after her virgin vows. Xenophon writes in his account of the boyhood of Cyrus the Elder that when Abradatas was killed, Panthea his wife, who had loved him with wonderful love, laid herself beside his mangled body, stabbed herself in the breast, and poured her own blood into her husband's wounds. A wife whom her husband had shown naked to his friend without her knowledge thought it just cause to kill the king; for she judged that she was not loved, since she could be shown to another. Rhodogune, the daughter of Darius, after her husband's death killed the nurse who was urging her to a second marriage. The stories tell that Alcestis died of her own accord for Admetus; and Penelope's chastity is Homer's song. Laodamia too is sung by the mouths of the poets as unwilling to survive when Protesilaus was killed at Troy.

Let me pass to Roman women; and first I will put Lucretia, who, unwilling to survive her violated chastity, wiped out the stain of her body with her blood. Duillius, who first triumphed at Rome for a naval battle, married Bilia, a virgin of such chastity that she was an example even in that age when unchastity was a monster, not a vice. When he was already old and his body trembling, he heard himself reproached in some quarrel with foul breath, and went home sad. And when he complained to his wife that she had never warned him so that he could cure this fault, she said: "I would have, had I not thought that all men's mouths smell so." The chaste and noble woman deserves praise either way: whether she did not know her husband's fault, or bore it patiently, and her husband learned of his bodily misfortune not from the disgust of his wife but from the abuse of an enemy. Certainly a woman who takes a second husband cannot say this. Marcia, the younger daughter of Cato, when asked why after losing her husband she did not marry again, answered that she could not find a man who wanted her more than her property. By this saying she showed that wealth is usually chosen in wives rather than chastity, and that many marry wives not with their eyes but with their fingers. An excellent thing indeed, which avarice procures! The same woman, when she was mourning her husband and the matrons asked her what day would be the last of her mourning, said: "The same as of my life." I think that a woman who so sought her absent husband was not thinking of a second marriage. Brutus married Porcia as a virgin; Cato married Marcia not a virgin. But Marcia passed back and forth between Hortensius and Cato, and Marcia could live without Cato; Porcia could not live without Brutus. For women attach themselves more to husbands who are their only ones; and to have known no other is a great bond of closer affection. When a relative advised Annia to marry another husband (for she was of full age and had a good face), she said: "By no means will I do so. For if I find a good man, I do not want to fear losing him; if a bad one, what need is there to endure the worst after the best?" Porcia the younger, when a certain woman of good character who had a second husband was praised in her presence, answered: "A happy and chaste matron never marries more than once." Marcella the elder, asked by her mother whether she was glad she had married, answered: "So very glad that I want no more." Valeria, sister of the Messallas, after losing her husband Servius, would marry no one. Asked why she did so, she said that for her, her husband Servius was always alive.

I am aware that in this catalogue of women I have said much more than the custom of giving examples allows, and that a learned reader may justly blame me. But what am I to do, when the women of our time thrust the Apostle's authority at me, and before the funeral of their first husband has even gone out, recite from memory the precepts on second marriage? So that those who despise the faithfulness of Christian chastity may at least learn chastity from the pagans. There is said to be a golden little book of Theophrastus, On Marriage, in which he asks whether a wise man should marry. And having laid down that the wise man may sometimes marry if the woman is beautiful, of good character, of honorable parents, and he himself healthy and rich, he at once added: "But these things rarely all agree in a marriage. So a wise man should not marry a wife. For, first, the study of philosophy is hindered, and no one can serve books and a wife equally. Many things are necessary for the uses of matrons: costly clothes, gold, jewels, expenses, maidservants, all kinds of furniture, litters and gilded carriages. Then all night long there are chattering complaints: 'That woman goes out better dressed; this one is honored by everybody; I, poor thing, am despised in the gathering of women. Why were you looking at the neighbor? What were you saying to the maid? What did you bring me from the forum?' We cannot have a friend or a companion. She suspects that love of another is hatred of her. If there is a very learned teacher in any city, we can neither leave our wife nor go with that burden. To support a poor wife is hard; to bear a rich one is torture. Add that there is no choosing a wife, but she must be kept whatever she turns out to be. If she is ill-tempered, foolish, ugly, proud, smelly, whatever her fault, we learn it after the wedding. A horse, an ass, an ox, a dog, and the cheapest slaves, clothes too, and kettles, a wooden seat, a cup, and an earthenware pitcher are tried first and so bought; only a wife is not displayed, lest she displease before she is married. Her face must always be attended to and her beauty praised, lest, if you look at another woman, she think she displeases you. She must be called mistress, her birthday celebrated, oaths sworn by her health, wishes made that she may survive you; her nurse must be honored, and her nursemaid, her father's slave, her foster child, her handsome attendant, her curled steward, and the eunuch gelded for her long and safe lust: under these names adulteries lie hidden. Whomever she loves must be loved against your will. If you entrust the whole house to her rule, you must be her slave. If you keep anything in your own control, she will think she is not trusted, and will turn to hatred and quarrels; and unless you take care quickly, she will prepare poisons. If you let in old women and soothsayers and diviners and sellers of jewels and silk clothes, there is danger to her chastity; if you forbid them, there is the injury of suspicion. But what good is even careful watching, when an unchaste wife cannot be guarded and a chaste one ought not to be? For necessity is an unfaithful guardian of chastity, and she is truly to be called chaste who was free to sin if she wished. A beautiful woman is quickly loved; an ugly one easily desires. What many love is hard to guard; what no one thinks worth having is a nuisance to possess. Yet an ugly wife is kept with less misery than a beautiful one is guarded. Nothing is safe for which the desires of a whole people sigh. One tempts with beauty, another with wit, another with charm, another with generosity. What is attacked on every side is somehow or sometime taken. But if wives are married for the management of the house, the comfort of sickness, and escape from loneliness, a faithful slave manages much better, obeying his master's authority and following his arrangements, than a wife, who thinks herself mistress in this, that she acts against her husband's will, that is, does what pleases her, not what she is told. Friends, and home-born slaves bound by kindnesses, can sit by a sick man better than she who charges her tears to our account, and for hope of the inheritance sells her flood of tears, and, parading her anxiety, troubles the sick man's mind with despair. And if she herself is sick, one must be sick with her and never leave her bedside. Or if she is a good and pleasant wife (which is nevertheless a rare bird), we groan with her in labor and are tortured when she is in danger. But a wise man can never be alone. He has with him all who are and ever were good, and he moves his free mind wherever he wishes. What he cannot embrace with the body he embraces in thought. And if there is a lack of people, he speaks with God. He will never be less alone than when he is alone. Further, to marry a wife for the sake of children, so that our name may not perish, or that we may have support in old age and certain heirs, is most stupid. For what is it to us, as we depart from the world, if another is called by our name, when a son does not at once bear his father's name, and there are countless people called by the same name? Or what support in old age is it to bring up at home one who may die before you, or be of the most perverse character? Or certainly, when he has come to mature age, you will seem to him slow to die. Friends and relatives whom you choose by judgment are better and surer heirs than those you are forced to have whether you will or not. A surer inheritance, though, is to use up your property well while you live than to leave what you acquired by your labor to uncertain uses."

When Theophrastus discusses such things, whom of the Christians would he not put to shame, whose citizenship is in heaven, who say every day, "I desire to depart and be with Christ"? Will a fellow heir of Christ want a human heir? Will he wish for children and delight in a line of grandchildren, whom perhaps Antichrist will seize, when we read that Moses and Samuel preferred others to their own sons and did not count as their children those whom they saw displeasing to the Lord? Cicero, asked by Hirtius to marry his sister after his divorce from Terentia, declined altogether, saying that he could not give his attention equally to a wife and to philosophy. Meanwhile that excellent wife, who had drunk wisdom from Tully's fountains, married Sallust, his enemy, and thirdly Messalla Corvinus, and rolled down, as it were, by certain steps of eloquence. Socrates had two wives, Xanthippe and Myrto, the granddaughter of Aristides. When they often quarreled with each other, and he used to laugh at them because they disputed over him, a most ugly man, with snub nose, bald forehead, hairy shoulders, and bandy legs, at last they turned their attack on him, beat him badly, and chased him a long way as he fled. Once, when he had stood up to Xanthippe as she heaped endless abuse on him from a higher place, he was drenched with dirty water, and answered nothing more than, wiping his head, "I knew that rain would follow that thunder." Lucius Sulla the Fortunate (had he not had a wife!) had as his wife Metella, who was openly unchaste; and (since we are the last to learn our own ills) it was being sung at Athens and Sulla did not know; he first learned the secrets of his own house from the abuse of the enemy. To Gnaeus Pompey, when the others thought he was knowingly tolerating his unchaste wife Mucia, whom the eunuchs of Pontus and the bands of Mithridates courted, a fellow soldier on campaign revealed it, and dismayed the conqueror of the whole world with sad news. Marcus Cato the Censor had as his wife Actoria Paula, of low birth, a drunkard, uncontrolled, and (what no one could believe) haughty to Cato. I say this so that no one may think that if he marries a poor woman he has sufficiently provided for harmony. Philip, king of the Macedonians, against whom Demosthenes' Philippics thunder, was shut out by his angry wife as he was entering their bedroom according to custom; shut out, he kept silent and consoled himself for the wrong with a tragic verse. The rhetorician Gorgias recited at Olympia a very fine book on concord to the Greeks, who were then at odds with each other. His enemy Melanthius said: "This man gives us precepts on concord, who could not make himself, his wife, and his maid, three people, agree in one house." For his wife was jealous of the maid's beauty and harassed her most chaste husband with daily quarrels. Whole tragedies of Euripides are curses on women. That is why Hermione too says: "The counsels of evil women have deceived me." In Leptis, a half-barbarous city set in a desert, it is the custom that on the second day the daughter-in-law asks her mother-in-law for the loan of a pot; she at once refuses, so that you may know that saying of Terence is true, which he deliberately put ambiguously: "What is this? All mothers-in-law hate their daughters-in-law." We read of a certain nobleman among the Romans who, when his friends reproached him for divorcing a beautiful, chaste, and rich wife, stretched out his foot and said to them: "This shoe too, which you see, seems to you new and elegant; but no one but me knows where it pinches me." Herodotus writes that a woman puts off her modesty with her clothes. And our comic poet thinks him fortunate who has never married a wife. Why should I mention Pasiphae, Clytemnestra, and Eriphyle? The first, wallowing in luxury, being a king's wife, is said to have sought union with a bull; the second to have killed her husband for love of an adulterer; the third to have betrayed Amphiaraus and preferred a golden necklace to her husband's life. Whatever the tragedies swell with, and whatever overthrows houses, cities, and kingdoms, is the rivalry of wives and concubines. Parents' hands are armed against their children; unspeakable feasts are served; and for the rape of one little woman Europe and Asia clash in a ten-year war. We read of some women who, divorced on the second day of their marriage, at once married again. Both husbands are to be blamed: the one whom she displeased so quickly, and the one whom she pleased so quickly. Epicurus, the champion of pleasure (though his disciple Metrodorus had Leontion as his wife), says that the wise man should rarely marry, because many troubles are mixed with marriage. And as riches, honors, bodily health, and the other things we call indifferent are neither good nor bad, but, set as it were in the middle, become good or bad by use and outcome, so wives too are placed on the border between good and bad. But it is grievous for a wise man to fall into doubt whether he is going to marry a good or a bad one. Chrysippus ridiculously advises the wise man to marry, lest he offend Jupiter Gamelius and Genethlius. For on that reasoning the Latins will not have to marry, because they have no nuptial Jupiter. And if, as he thinks, the names of the gods prejudge the lives of men, then he who sits down willingly will offend Jupiter Stator.

Aristotle and Plutarch and our Seneca wrote books on marriage, from which some of the foregoing also comes, and what we add here: "Love of beauty is forgetfulness of reason and close to madness; a foul vice, wholly unbecoming a sound mind. It confuses counsels, breaks lofty and noble spirits, drags them down from great thoughts to the lowest; it makes men querulous, irritable, rash, harshly domineering, slavishly fawning, useless to all, and at last to love itself. For while it burns insatiably with the desire for enjoyment, it wastes more time in suspicions, tears, and complaints; it makes itself hated, and at last is hateful to itself." The whole attack on love is set out in Plato, and Lysias explains all its drawbacks, that it is led not by judgment but by frenzy; and above all that a most troublesome guardian lies in wait over the beauty of wives. Seneca reports moreover that he knew a certain distinguished man who, when about to go out in public, used to tie his wife's breastband around his chest, and could not do without her presence even for a moment of an hour; and husband and wife would drink no draught unless it had been touched by the lips of each in turn; and they did other things no less silly, into which the improvident force of burning affection broke out. The origin of the love was honorable, but its excess was ugly. And it makes no difference from how honorable a cause one goes mad. That is why Xystus too says in his Sentences: "He who loves his own wife too ardently is an adulterer." For with another's wife all love is shameful; with one's own, excessive love. A wise man ought to love his wife with judgment, not with passion. Let him govern the impulses of pleasure and not be carried headlong into intercourse. Nothing is fouler than to love a wife like an adulteress. Certainly those who say they join themselves to wives and raise children for the sake of the state and the human race should at least imitate the cattle, and when their wives' bellies have swelled, not destroy their children; nor show themselves to their wives as lovers but as husbands. Some marriages have grown out of adulteries; and, shameful thing! the same men taught chastity to those from whom they had taken it away. So satiety quickly dissolves such marriages. As soon as the allurement of lust is gone, what pleased has become cheap. "For what shall I say," says Seneca, "of poor men, a great many of whom are hired to take the name of husband in order to evade the laws passed against the unmarried? How can a man who has been married govern morals, prescribe chastity, and keep a husband's authority?" It is the saying of a most learned man that chastity must above all be preserved, for when it is lost every virtue falls. In it lies the chief place among women's virtues. It commends the poor woman, exalts the rich, redeems the ugly, adorns the beautiful; it deserves well of ancestors, whose blood it does not corrupt with stolen offspring; well of children, who need neither blush for their mother nor doubt their father; well above all of itself, which it protects from the outrage of a stranger's body. There is no greater calamity of captivity than to be dragged to another's lust. The consulship makes men illustrious; eloquence carries them to an eternal name; military glory and a triumph consecrate a new family. There are many things that ennoble outstanding talents. A woman's virtue is properly chastity. This made Lucretia equal to Brutus, and perhaps preferred her, since Brutus learned from a woman that he could not be a slave. This made Cornelia equal to Gracchus, this Porcia to the other Brutus. Tanaquil is better known than her husband. Antiquity has already hidden him among the many names of kings; her a virtue rare among women has fixed too deeply in the memory of all ages for her to fall out of it. Let married women imitate, then, Theano, Cleobulina, Gorgo, Timoclea, the Claudias and the Cornelias; and when they see the Apostle pardoning second marriage to evil women, let them read that before our religion shone in the world, the once-married always had honor among matrons; that through them the rites of Female Fortune were usually performed; that no priest was twice married, no flamen had two wives; that the hierophants of Athens even to this day are castrated by drinking hemlock, and once chosen for the pontificate cease to be men.

His second proposition is that those who have been baptized cannot be tempted by the devil. And lest he seem to say this foolishly, he added: "But whoever have been tempted, I have shown were baptized with water only and not with the Spirit, as we read of Simon Magus. That is why John too says: 'Everyone who is born of God does not commit sin, because his seed remains in him, and he cannot sin, because he is born of God. By this the children of God and the children of the devil are made manifest.' And at the end of the letter: 'Everyone who is born of God does not sin; but his birth from God keeps him, and the evil one does not touch him.'"

A strong objection indeed, and one that would remain unanswerable were it not answered by the testimony of John himself. For he at once added: "Little children, keep yourselves from idols." If everyone who is born of God does not sin and cannot be tempted by the devil, how does he command them to beware lest they be tempted? And again in the same letter: "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all iniquity. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." I think that John, baptized, wrote to the baptized, and that all sin is from the devil. He confesses himself a sinner and hopes for forgiveness of sins after baptism; and my Jovinian says: "Do not touch me, for I am clean." What then? Does the Apostle contradict himself? Not at all. For in the same place he at once explains why he said this: "My little children, I write these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone sins, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only but also for those of the whole world. And by this we know that we have known him, if we keep his commandments. He who says he knows him and does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we know that we are in him. He who says he abides in him ought himself to walk as he walked." Therefore, he says, I write to you, my little children, "Everyone who is born of God does not sin," so that you may not sin, and may know that you abide in the Lord's birth as long as you do not sin. Indeed, those who persevere in the Lord's birth cannot sin. For what fellowship has light with darkness? Christ with Belial? As day and night cannot be mixed, so neither can righteousness and iniquity, sin and good works, Christ and Antichrist. If we receive Christ into the lodging of our heart, we at once put the devil to flight. If we sin, and the devil enters through the door of sin, Christ at once withdraws. That is why David too says after his sin: "Restore to me the joy of your salvation," that is, the joy he had lost by sinning. "He who says he knows him and does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him." Christ is called the truth: "I am," he says, "the way and the life and the truth." In vain do we applaud ourselves in him whose commandments we do not do. "To him who knows the good and does not do it, it is sin." "As the body without the spirit is dead, so faith without works is dead." Nor let us think it a great thing to know one God, when the demons too believe and tremble. "He who says he abides in him ought himself to walk as he walked." Let our opponent choose which of the two he will; we give him the choice. Does he abide in Christ, or not? If he abides, then let him walk as Christ did. But if it is rash to promise a likeness to the Lord's virtues, he does not abide in Christ, because he does not walk as Christ. He did no sin, nor was deceit found in his mouth; when he was reviled, he did not revile in return; and like a lamb before its shearer, so he did not open his mouth; to him the prince of this world came and found nothing in him; who, though he had done no sin, God made sin for us. But we, according to the Letter of James, all sin in many things; and no one is clean from sin, not even if his life is of one day. For who will boast that he has a chaste heart? Or who will be confident that he is clean from sins? And we are held guilty after the likeness of Adam's transgression. That is why David too says: "Behold, I was conceived in iniquities, and in sins my mother conceived me." And blessed Job: "If I am righteous, my mouth will speak impiously; and if I am blameless, I shall be found perverse. And if I am purified in snow and washed with clean hands, you have dipped me enough in filth, and my garment has abhorred me." But lest we despair utterly, thinking that we cannot be saved after the sins of baptism, he at once tempers this very thing: "And if anyone has sinned, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous, and he is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only but also for those of the whole world." He says this to believers after baptism, and promises the Lord as advocate for their offenses. Nor does he say, "If you sin, you have an advocate with the Father, Christ, and he is the propitiation for your sins," lest you should say that they had not received baptism with full faith; but "We have an advocate," he says, "with the Father, Jesus Christ, and he is the propitiation for our sins"; and not only for the sins of John and those like him, but also for those of the whole world. And in the whole world are the apostles too and all believers. From this it is clearly proved that one can sin after baptism. For in vain do we have Jesus Christ as advocate if sin is impossible.

The apostle Peter, to whom it had been said, "He who has been washed does not need to wash again," and, "You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church," denies, terrified by a maidservant. And the Lord himself says: "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail." And in the same place: "Watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." And if you answer that this was said before the cross, certainly after the cross we say in the Lord's Prayer: "Forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors; and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." If we do not sin after baptism, why do we ask that sins be forgiven us which were already forgiven in baptism? Why do we pray that we may not enter into temptation and may be delivered from evil, if the devil cannot tempt the baptized? It is another matter if this prayer belongs to catechumens and does not suit the faithful and Christians. Paul, the vessel of election, chastises his body and brings it into subjection, lest, having preached to others, he himself be found reprobate. "And there was given me," he says, "a thorn in the flesh, an angel of Satan to buffet me." And to the Corinthians: "I fear lest, as the serpent deceived Eve by his cunning, so your minds be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ." And elsewhere: "To whom you forgive anything, I forgive also. For what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, I did for your sakes in the person of Christ, so that we may not be outwitted by Satan; for we are not ignorant of his designs." And again: "Let no temptation seize you except what is human. God is faithful, who will not let you be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also provide the way out, that you may be able to bear it." And: "Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall." And to the Galatians: "You were running well; who hindered you from obeying the truth?" And elsewhere: "We wished to come to you, I Paul, once and again, but Satan hindered us." And to the married: "And come together again, lest Satan tempt you because of your incontinence." And again: "But I say, walk by the spirit, and you will not fulfill the desires of the flesh. For the flesh lusts against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do what you wish." Being made up of both, we must suffer the wars of both substances against each other. And to the Ephesians: "Our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against principalities and powers, against the rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places." And does anyone think we ought to be secure and asleep after baptism? To the Hebrews as well: "For it is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have nonetheless tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come, and have fallen away, to be renewed again to repentance, since they crucify the Son of God to themselves again and hold him up to contempt." Certainly we cannot deny that those who have been enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have become partakers of the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the good word of God, are baptized. But if the baptized cannot sin, how does the Apostle now say, "and have fallen away"? But lest Montanus and Novatus laugh here, who maintain that those who have crucified the Son of God to themselves and held him up to contempt cannot be renewed through repentance, he at once resolves this error and says: "But we are confident of better things concerning you, beloved, and things nearer to salvation, though we speak thus. For God is not unjust to forget your work and the love which you showed in his name, you who have ministered to the saints and still minister." And truly it would be great injustice in God if he only punished sins and did not accept good works. I spoke thus, says the Apostle, to draw you back from sins and make you more cautious by the fear of despair. But I am confident of better things concerning you, beloved, and things nearer to salvation. For it is not God's justice to forget good works, and the ministry which you have shown and show to the saints for his name's sake, and to remember only sins. The apostle James too, knowing that the baptized can be tempted and fall by their own will, says: "Blessed is the man who endures temptation, for when he has been proved he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him." And lest we should think, according to that passage of Genesis where it is written that Abraham was tempted by God, that we too are tempted by God, he says: "Let no one, when he is tempted, say, 'I am tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted by evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each one is tempted when he is drawn away and enticed by his own lust. Then lust, when it has conceived, gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is finished, brings forth death." God created us with free will; we are not drawn by necessity either to virtues or to vices. Otherwise, where there is necessity, there is no crown. As in good works God is the one who brings them to completion (for it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who has mercy and helps, that we may be able to reach the goal), so in evil deeds and sins our seeds are the incentives and the devil brings them to completion. When he sees us building hay, wood, stubble on the foundation of Christ, then he sets fire to it. Let us build, then, gold, silver, precious stones, and he will not dare to tempt us; although even in this the possession is not certain and secure. For the lion sits in ambush in hidden places to kill the innocent. And the furnace tests the potter's vessels, and the temptation of tribulation tests just men. And in another place it is written: "Son, when you come to the service of God, prepare yourself for temptation." Again the same James says: "Be doers of the word and not hearers only. If anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who observes his natural face in a mirror; he observed it, and at once going away forgot what he was like." In vain did he warn them to join works to faith if they could not sin after baptism. "Whoever keeps the whole law," he says, "and sins in one point, has become guilty of all." Which of us is without sin? "God has shut up all under sin, that he may have mercy on all." Peter too says: "The Lord knows how to rescue the godly from temptation." And of the false teachers: "These are springs without water and clouds driven by storms, for whom the darkness of gloom is reserved. For, speaking great swelling words of vanity, they entice through the lusts of the flesh, through debauchery, those who had barely escaped and have returned to error." Does not the apostolic word seem to you to have painted the new faction of ignorance? For they open up springs, as it were, of knowledge, because they promise a shower of teachings that they do not have, like prophetic clouds to which the truth of God may come; and they are driven by the storms of demons and vices. They speak great things, and all their speech is pride: "But everyone who exalts his heart is unclean before God." So that those who had barely fled from sins return to their error; and they urge, in debauchery, the delicacies of food and flesh. For who would not gladly hear, "Let us eat and drink, and we shall reign forever"? They call the wise and prudent perverse; but those who are sweet in their speech they listen to more. The apostle John, or rather the Savior in John, writing to the angel of the church of Ephesus, says: "I know your works, and your labor and your patience, and that you have endured for my name's sake and have not grown weary; but I have this against you, that you have left your first love. Remember from where you have fallen, and repent, and do the first works; otherwise I will come to you and move your lampstand from its place, unless you repent." Likewise he calls the other churches too, Smyrna, Pergamum, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, Laodicea, to repentance, and threatens them unless they return to their former works. And in Sardis he says he has a few who have not defiled their garments, and they will walk with him in white, because they are worthy. And to whom does he say, "Remember from where you have fallen"? And, "Behold, the devil is about to throw some of you into prison, that you may be tested"? And, "I know where you dwell, where Satan's throne is"? And, "Remember how you received and heard, and keep it, and repent," and the rest? Surely to one who has believed and been baptized, and who, once standing, has fallen through sin.

I had put off for a little the examples from the Old Testament, because whenever they tell against them, they usually say: "The law and the prophets were until John." But who does not know that under another dispensation of God all the saints of former times were of the same merit as Christians are now? As Abraham then pleased God in marriage, so virgins now please him in perpetual chastity. He served the law and his time; let us too serve the Gospel and our time, upon whom the ends of the ages have come. David, chosen according to the Lord's heart, who had done all his will, and who had said in a certain psalm, "Judge me, Lord, for I have walked in my innocence, and trusting in the Lord I shall not be weak. Prove me, Lord, and try me; burn my reins and my heart," was afterwards tempted by the devil, and after his sin says in repentance: "Have mercy on me, O God, according to your great mercy." A great sin wants to be blotted out by great mercy. Solomon, the beloved of the Lord, to whom God had twice been revealed, because he was a lover of women departed from the love of God. The Book of Days (Paralipomenon) reports that Manasseh, a most impious king, was restored to his former dignity after the Babylonian captivity. And Josiah, a holy man, is pierced by the Egyptian king on the plain of Megiddo. Jesus too, the son of Josedech, the high priest, though he went before in a type of the Savior, who bore our sins and joined to himself a foreign Church from the Gentiles, is nevertheless, according to the letter, brought in after his priesthood clothed in filthy garments, and the devil stands at his right hand; and afterwards white garments are given back to him. It is superfluous to write of Moses and Aaron, that they offended God at the water of contradiction and did not enter the land of promise, since blessed Job records that even angels and every creature can sin, saying: "What, is a man clean before God? Or a man without stain in his works? If he does not trust his servants, and finds something perverse against his angels, how much more those who dwell in houses of clay, of whom we too are made, of the same clay!" "The life of man on earth is a temptation." And Lucifer fell, who used to send to all the nations. And he who was brought up in the paradise of delights among the twelve stones, wounded, went down from the mountain of the Lord to the underworld. That is why the Savior says in the Gospel: "I saw Satan falling like lightning from heaven." If that loftiest height fell, who cannot fall? If there are ruins in heaven, how much more on earth? And yet, though Lucifer has fallen (or rather, after his fall, the ancient serpent), "his strength is in his loins, and his power over the navel of his belly. Great trees are shaded by him, and he sleeps beside the rush and the reed and the sedge. He is king of all that are in the waters": that is, where there is pleasure and debauchery, and offspring, and the watering of marriages. "For who will uncover the face of his garment? And who will open the doors of his face? The nations feast on him, and the peoples of the Phoenicians divide him." And lest perhaps the silent thought of the reader should suppose that only the peoples of the Phoenicians and the nations of the Ethiopians are meant, to whom the dragon has been given as food, it is at once said of those who are crossing the sea of this world and hastening to reach the harbor of salvation: "And in the fishermen's boats his head; he stands an unwearied anvil; he counts iron as straw and bronze as rotten wood. And all the gold of the sea is under him like mud. He makes the deep boil like a bronze pot; he reckons the sea as destroyed, and the underworld of the abyss as captive. He sees every high thing." And my Jovinian thinks that he can easily yield to him! What shall I say of holy men, and of the angels, who, since they are creatures of God, can certainly receive sin? He dared to tempt the Son of God, and, beaten back by his first and second answer, he nevertheless raised his head, and, wounded a third time, withdrew until a time, putting off the temptation rather than taking it away. And we flatter ourselves about baptism, which, as it forgives former sins, so cannot keep us for the future unless the baptized keep their heart with all watchfulness.

At last we have come to food, and the difficulty of the third question is set against us: "All things were created to serve the use of mortals. And as man, the rational animal, as a kind of inhabitant and owner of the world, is subject to God and reveres his Maker, so all living creatures were created either for the food of men, or for clothing, or for ploughing the earth, or for carrying crops, or for man himself; that is why beasts of burden (jumenta) are so called from helping (juvare). 'What is man,' says David, 'that you are mindful of him, or the son of man, that you visit him? You have made him a little lower than the angels; you have crowned him with glory and honor, and set him over the works of your hands. You have put all things under his feet, all sheep and oxen, and the beasts of the field besides, the birds of the air and the fish of the sea that pass through the paths of the sea.' Granted," he says, "that the ox was made for ploughing, the horse for riding, the dog for guarding, goats for milk, sheep for wool. What use are pigs except for eating their flesh? What use are roe deer, fawns, does, boars, hares, and game of that kind? What use are wild and tame geese? What use ducks, figpeckers, francolins, coots, thrushes? Why does the hen run about in houses? If they are not eaten, all these were created by God in vain. But what need is there of arguments when Scripture most plainly teaches that everything that moves, like the green herbs, has been given us for food; and the Apostle cries out: 'To the pure all things are pure,' and 'nothing is to be rejected that is received with thanksgiving'; and that in the last times there will come those who forbid marriage and eating foods that God created for use. The Lord himself is called a wine-drinker and a glutton by the Pharisees, and a guest of tax collectors and sinners; he did not refuse Zacchaeus's dinner, and went to the wedding feast. Unless you say, with foolish contentiousness, that he went to the dinner intending to fast, and said like impostors, 'This I eat, that I do not eat; I will not drink wine,' wine which he had created from water! In the type of his blood he offered not water but wine. After the resurrection he ate fish and honeycomb, not sesame, nuts, and little broths. The apostle Peter did not wait for the star in the Jewish manner, but went up to the roof at the sixth hour to dine. Paul broke bread in the ship, not dried figs. To Timothy, suffering in his stomach, he urged drinking wine, not perry. They are pleased with themselves for abstaining from foods, as though pagan superstition too did not keep the Chastity of the Mother of the Gods and of Isis."

I will follow, then, the steps of the proposition set out; and before I come to the Scriptures and show from them that fasts are pleasing to God and continence acceptable, I will set the arguments of the philosophers against his arguments. And I will prove that we do not follow the doctrine of Empedocles and Pythagoras, who because of metempsychosis think nothing that moves and lives should be eaten, and hold those guilty of the same crime who cut down a fir or an oak, as if they were parricides and poisoners; but that we revere our Creator, who created all things for the uses of men. And as the ox was made for ploughing, the horse for riding, dogs for guarding, goats for milk, sheep for wool, so too pigs and deer and roe and hares and the rest; but these were not created at once for eating, but for other human uses. For if everything that moves and lives was made to be eaten and prepared for the gullet, let them answer me why elephants were made, why lions, bears, leopards, wolves; why vipers, scorpions, bugs, gnats, and fleas; why the vulture, eagle, raven, hawk; why whales, dolphins, seals, and tiny snails. Which of us has ever eaten a lion, a viper, a vulture, a stork, a kite, or the little worms that crawl on the shore? As these, then, have their own uses, so we can say that the other beasts, fish, and birds too were created not for eating but for medicine. Indeed, physicians know for how many things the flesh of the viper, from which theriac is made, is useful. Shavings of ivory are taken as various remedies. The gall of the hyena restores clearness to the eyes, and its dung and that of dogs cures putrid wounds. And (what will perhaps be surprising to read) Galen teaches in his book on simple remedies for how many cures human dung is useful. Naturalists say that the slough a snake casts, boiled in oil, wonderfully soothes earache. What seems so useless to the ignorant as bugs? Yet if a leech has stuck in the throat, it is at once vomited up when their smoke is inhaled, and difficulty in passing urine is relieved by applying them. As for the fat of pigs, geese, hens, and pheasants, all the books of the physicians declare its usefulness; if you read them, you will see that there are as many cures in the vulture as it has members. Peacock's dung soothes the heat of gout. I would say for what diseases cranes, storks, eagle's gall, hawk's blood, the ostrich, frogs, chameleons, swallow's dung and flesh are suitable, if my purpose were to discuss the healing of bodies. Let whoever wishes read Aristotle and Theophrastus in prose, Marcellus of Side and our Flavius in hexameter verse, Pliny the Elder too, and Dioscorides, and the other naturalists and physicians, who relate no herb, no stone, no animal, whether creeping, flying, or swimming, that they do not refer to the use of their art. So when you say to me, "Why was the pig created?", I will at once answer you, like boys quarreling, "Why were vipers, why scorpions?" Nor will you judge God a maker of superfluous things because there are very many beasts and birds which your gullet refuses. But lest this seem contentious and combative rather than true, hear: pigs, boars, deer, and the other animals were created so that soldiers and athletes, sailors, orators, miners, and the others bound to hard labor, who need bodily strength, might have food: those who carry arms and provisions, who weaken each other's limbs with fists and kicks, who pull oars, whose lungs must be strong for shouting and speaking, who overturn mountains and sleep under the open sky and the rain. But our religion trains not a boxer, not an athlete, not sailors, not soldiers, not miners, but a follower of wisdom who has dedicated himself to the worship of God, and who knows why he was created, why he lives in the world, and where he hastens to go. That is why the Apostle says: "When I am weak, then I am stronger"; and, "If our outer man is corrupted, yet the inner is renewed day by day"; and, "I desire to depart and be with Christ"; and, "Make no provision for the flesh in its desires." Is it commanded to all not to have two tunics, nor food in a bag, money in the belt, a staff in the hand, sandals on the feet; to sell all they possess and give to the poor and follow Jesus? Surely to those who wish to be perfect. Otherwise John the Baptist commands one thing to soldiers, another to tax collectors. And the Lord says in the Gospel to the one who had boasted of fulfilling the whole law: "If you would be perfect, go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and come, follow me." Lest he should seem to lay a heavy burden on one unwilling, he left it to the hearer's own will, saying, "If you would be perfect." So I too will say to you: If you would be perfect, it is good not to drink wine and not to eat meat. If you would be perfect, it is better to fatten the soul than the body. But if you are a little one and the sauces of cooks delight you, no one is snatching the dainty dishes from your gullet. Eat and drink, and if you please, rise up with Israel to play and sing, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." Let him eat and drink who looks for destruction after food, who says with Epicurus, "After death there is nothing, and death itself is nothing." We believe Paul when he thunders: "Food for the belly and the belly for food; but God will destroy both the one and the other."

We have set down these few things from the Scriptures to show that our views agree with the philosophers. But who does not know that each nation is accustomed to eat not by a common law of nature, but by what it has in plenty? For example, the Arabs and Saracens and all the barbarism of the desert live on the milk and flesh of camels, because, given the climate and barrenness of their regions, this kind of animal is easily born and raised among them. They think it a sin to eat the flesh of pigs; for swine, which are usually fed on acorns, chestnuts, fern roots, and barley, are found among them rarely or not at all, and if they are found, they lack the food we have mentioned. On the other hand, if you compel the northern peoples to eat asses and camels, they will think it like being forced to eat a wolf or a raven. In Pontus and Phrygia the head of the household exacts as a great revenue the white, fat worms with little black heads that are born in rotten wood. And as among us the francolin and the figpecker, the mullet and the parrot-fish are counted delicacies, so among them it is luxury to have eaten the wood-eater. Again, the peoples of the East and of Libya are accustomed to eat locusts, because clouds of locusts are found throughout the desert and the hot vastness of the wilderness. John the Baptist too proves this true. Compel a Phrygian or a Pontic to eat a locust, and he will think it a sin. Force a Syrian, an African, or an Arab to swallow the Pontic worms, and he will despise them as he would flies, millipedes, and lizards, although the Syrians are accustomed to eat land crocodiles and the Africans green lizards. In Egypt and Palestine, because of the scarcity of oxen, no one eats a cow, though they take the flesh of bulls, oxen, and calves as food. But in our province they think it a crime to devour calves. That is why the emperor Valens recently gave a law throughout the East that no one should eat the flesh of calves, providing for the good of agriculture and correcting the very bad custom of the Judaizing populace, who consumed calves instead of fatted fowls and sucklings. The Nomads, the Troglodytes, the Scythians, and the new savagery of the Huns eat half-raw flesh. Further, the Fish-eaters, a people wandering on the shore of the Red Sea, roast fish on rocks heated by the sun and live on this food alone. The Sarmatians, Quadi, Vandals, and countless other nations delight in the flesh of horses and foxes. Why speak of other nations, when I myself as a young man saw in Gaul the Atticoti, a British people, eating human flesh; and that, when they find herds of pigs and droves of cattle and sheep in the woods, they are accustomed to cut off the buttocks of the shepherds and the breasts of the women, and think these the only delicacies? The nation of the Scots has no wives of its own; as if they had read Plato's Republic and followed the example of Cato, no one among them has a wife of his own, but they run riot like cattle as each pleases. The Persians, Medes, Indians, and Ethiopians, kingdoms not small and equal to the Roman empire, have intercourse with mothers and grandmothers, with daughters and granddaughters. The Massagetae and Derbices think those most wretched who die of sickness; and when their parents, kinsmen, and relatives reach old age, they kill and devour them, thinking it better that they be eaten by themselves than by worms. The Tibareni hang on gibbets the old people they have loved. The Hyrcanians throw them half-alive to birds and dogs, the Caspians throw the dead to the same beasts. The Scythians bury alive, with the bones of the dead, those whom the dead loved. The Bactrians throw the old to dogs kept for this very purpose; and when Stasanor, Alexander's governor, wished to correct this, he almost lost his province. Compel an Egyptian to drink sheep's milk; induce, if you can, a man of Pelusium to eat an onion. Nearly every city in Egypt reveres its own beast and monster, and whatever it has worshiped it thinks inviolable and sacred. That is why their cities too are named after animals: Leonto, Cyno, Lyco, Busiris, Thmuis, which means "goat." And so that we might know what kind of gods Egypt has always received, one of their cities was recently named Antinous after Hadrian's favorite. You see, then, that not only in food but in burials, marriages, and every way of life each nation lives by its own rite and customs, and thinks what it has learned to be the law of nature. But suppose the eating of meat were common to all nations, and what is born everywhere were lawful everywhere: what is that to us, whose citizenship is in heaven, who, above Pythagoras and Empedocles and all the followers of wisdom, are indebted not to him to whom we are born but to him to whom we are reborn; who subdue the flesh that fights back and drags us to the incitements of lust? The eating of meat, the drinking of wine, and a full belly are the seedbed of lust. That is why the comic poet says: "Without Ceres and Liber, Venus grows cold."

Through the five senses, as through certain windows, the vices have their entry to the soul. The capital and citadel of the mind cannot be taken unless the hostile army has burst in through its gates. The soul is weighed down by their disturbances, and is captured by sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. If anyone delights in the races of the Circus, in the contests of athletes, in the agility of actors, in the beauty of women, in the splendor of jewels, clothes, and metals, and other things of this kind, the freedom of the soul has been captured through the windows of the eyes, and that prophetic saying is fulfilled: "Death has come in through your windows." Again, the hearing is charmed by the varied music of instruments and the modulations of voices; and by the songs of poets and comedies, and the witticisms and tricks of mimes, whatever enters through the ears makes the manliness of the mind effeminate. As for the sweetness of scents, the various perfumes, amomum, kyphi, oenanthe, musk, and the little skin of the foreign mouse, that they suit the dissolute and lovers no one denies but the dissolute. Further, who does not know that greed for food is the mother of avarice, and holds the soul down on the earth, weighed as it were with fetters? For the brief pleasure of the gullet, lands and seas are searched; and so that honeyed wine and costly food may pass down our throats, we sweat at the labor of our whole life. And the touch of others' bodies, and the more ardent desire for women, is close to madness. Because of this sense we desire, we are angry, we exult, we envy, we compete, we are anxious; and when the pleasure is satisfied, through a kind of regret we are kindled again, and we seek to do what, when we have done it, we will again regret. When, then, through these gates the wedges, as it were, of the disturbances have entered the citadel of our mind, where will its freedom be, where its strength, where the thought of God? Especially when touch paints for itself even past pleasures, and by the memory of vices compels the soul to share in them and in a way to commit what it does not do.

Invited by these reasons, many philosophers left the crowds of cities and the suburban gardens, where there were watered fields, leafy trees, the twittering of birds, the mirror of a spring, a murmuring stream, and many allurements of eyes and ears, lest through luxury and abundance of supplies the strength of the soul should grow soft and its chastity be violated. For it is useless to see often the things by which you were once captured, and to trust yourself to the experience of things you can hardly do without. For the Pythagoreans too, avoiding crowds of this kind, used to live in solitude and deserted places. The Platonists and Stoics also spent their time in the groves and porticoes of temples, so that, reminded by the holiness of a narrower dwelling, they might think of nothing but the virtues. And Plato himself, though he was rich and Diogenes trampled on his couches with muddy feet, chose, so as to be free for philosophy, the Academy, a country house far from the city, not only deserted but unhealthy, so that the onset of lust might be broken by care and the constant presence of disease, and his disciples might feel no other pleasure than that of the things they were learning. We read that some put out their own eyes so as not to be called away from the contemplation of philosophy by the sight of them. That is why the famous Crates of Thebes, throwing a considerable weight of gold into the sea, said: "Go to the bottom, evil desires; I will drown you, lest I be drowned by you." But if anyone thinks he can both enjoy abundance of food and drink and be free for wisdom, that is, both live in delights and not be held by the vices of delights, he deceives himself. For if, even when far removed from these, we are often captured by the allurements of nature and forced to desire what we have not in plenty, how much more if, surrounded by the nets of pleasures, we think ourselves free! Our sense thinks of what it sees, hears, smells, tastes, touches, and is drawn to desire the thing by whose pleasure it is captured. That the mind sees and the mind hears, and that we can neither hear nor see anything unless the sense is directed to what we see and hear, is also an old saying. It is difficult, indeed impossible, for those abounding in delights and pleasures not to think of what they are doing; and in vain do some pretend that they use pleasures with their faith, chastity, and integrity of mind unharmed, since it is against nature to enjoy abundance of pleasures without effect; and the Apostle, guarding against this very thing, said: "She who lives in pleasures is dead while she lives."

The bodily senses are like horses running without reason, while the soul, like a charioteer, holds the reins of the runners. And as horses without a driver rush headlong, so the body without the reason and command of the soul is carried to its own destruction. The philosophers also give another comparison of soul and body, saying that the body is a boy and the soul his tutor. That is why the historian says: "We use the soul to rule, the body rather to serve; the one we have in common with the gods, the other with the beasts." So unless the tutor's prudence governs the faults of the youth and boy, all his efforts and impulses hurry toward wantonness. We can live without four of the senses, that is, without sight, hearing, smell, and touch; but without taste and food it is impossible for the human body to subsist. Reason, then, must be present, so that we take such and so much food as will not burden the body or weigh down the freedom of the soul; for we must eat, and walk, and sleep, and digest, and afterwards, with the veins swollen, endure the incitements of lust. "Wine is a wanton thing, and drunkenness insolent; whoever mixes with them will not be wise." Nor let us take foods which we either digest with difficulty, or, having eaten, regret as lost with great pain and labor. Vegetables, fruit, and pulse are more easily prepared, and need no art or expense of cooks; they sustain the human body without trouble, and, taken in moderation (for what has no allurements for the gullet is not greedily devoured), they are digested more lightly. For no one is loaded with one or two foods, and those cheap, to the point of the swelling of the belly that is produced by the variety of meats and the delight of flavor. When dishes steam with various savors, they drag us, as it were, captive to eat them after hunger is satisfied. That is why diseases are stirred up by excessive fullness; and many remedy the intemperance of the gullet by vomiting, and what they shamefully put in they more shamefully put out.

Hippocrates teaches in his Aphorisms that stout and fat bodies which have reached the full measure of growth, unless they are quickly reduced by letting blood, break out into paralysis and the worst kinds of disease; and that therefore reduction is necessary, so that they may again have room to grow. For the nature of bodies does not remain in one state, but always either grows or decreases, and a living creature cannot live unless it is capable of growth. That is why Galen too, a most learned man, the interpreter of Hippocrates, says in his Exhortation to Medicine that athletes, whose life and art is fattening, can neither live long nor be healthy, and that their souls, wrapped as it were in mud by too much blood and fat, think nothing fine, nothing heavenly, but always of meat and belching and the gluttony of the belly. Diogenes asserts that tyrants and the overthrowing of cities, and wars both foreign and civil, are stirred up not for a simple diet of vegetables and fruit, but for meat and the delights of banquets. And what is surprising, Epicurus, the champion of pleasure, filled all his books with vegetables and fruit, and says that one should live on cheap foods, because meat and choice banquets are prepared with great care and misery, and bring more pain in the seeking than pleasure in the using. Our bodies need only food and drink. Where there is water and bread and the like, nature is satisfied. Whatever is beyond this does not concern the necessity of life but the vice of pleasure. To drink and to eat is to quench thirst and hunger, not the heat of delights. Those who eat meat need also things that are not meat; but those who use a simple diet do not require meat. Nor can we give our attention to wisdom if we think of an abundant table, which needs excessive labor and care. The need of nature is soon satisfied: cold and hunger can be driven off by simple clothing and food. That is why the Apostle says: "Having food and clothing, let us be content with these." Delicacies and varieties of dishes are the kindling of avarice. It is a great exultation of the soul, when you are content with little, to have the world under your feet, and to exchange all its power, its banquets and lusts, for the sake of which riches are acquired, for cheap foods, and to make up for them with a coarser tunic. Take away the luxury of banquets and lust, and no one will seek riches, whose use is either in the belly or under the belly. A sick man recovers health only by light food and a restrained diet, which is called leptē diaita. The foods, then, by which health is recovered can also preserve it, lest anyone think that diseases are stirred up by vegetables. And if vegetables do not supply the strength of the famous Milo of Croton, which is born and fed from meat, what need has the wise man and philosopher of Christ of such great strength, which is necessary for athletes and soldiers, and which, when he has it, will provoke him to vices? Let those think meat suitable for health who wish to indulge their lust and, sunk in the mire, are always burning for intercourse. A Christian needs health without excessive strength. Nor should it trouble us if the followers of this way of life are few; for good and faithful friends, the chaste and continent, are few, and virtue is always rare. Read of the continence of Fabricius and the poverty of Curius, and in so great a city you will hardly find a few to follow. Do not fear that, if you do not eat meat, fowlers and hunters will have learned their arts in vain.

We read of some who suffered from arthritis and gouty humors who, when reduced by the confiscation of their goods to a simple table and poor food, recovered. For they had been freed from the care of managing a household and from lavish banquets, which break both body and soul. Horace mocks the appetite for foods which, once consumed, leave regret:

Dicaearchus, in his books of Antiquities and his Description of Greece, reports that under Saturn, that is, in the golden age, when the ground poured forth everything, no one ate meat, but all lived on the grains and fruits that the earth produced of itself. Xenophon sets out the life of Cyrus, king of the Persians, in eight volumes, asserting that they lived on barley groats, cress, salt, and coarse bread. Of the tables and frugality of the Lacedaemonians the aforesaid Xenophon and Theophrastus and almost all the writers of Greece are witnesses. Chaeremon the Stoic, a most eloquent man, tells in his account of the life of the ancient priests of Egypt that, putting aside all the business and cares of the world, they were always in the temple; they contemplated the natures of things and the causes and courses of the stars; they never had relations with women; never saw their kinsfolk and relatives, not even their children, from the time they began to devote themselves to divine worship; they always abstained from meat and wine, because of the fineness of perception and because of the giddiness of head which they suffered from little food, and above all because of the desires of lust which arise from these foods and this drink. They rarely ate bread, so as not to burden the stomach; and if they ever ate it, they took pounded hyssop with it in their food, so as to digest the heavier food by its heat. They knew oil only with vegetables, and even that sparingly, to soften the nausea and harshness of the taste. "What shall I say," he says, "of birds, when they avoided even eggs and milk as meat, saying that the one is liquid flesh and the other blood with its color changed?" Their bed was woven of palm leaves, which they call baiae; a sloping stool, slanting on one side, they set on the ground as a pillow for the head, enduring fasts of two and three days. The humors of the body, which arise from idleness and staying in one place, they dried up by very strict control of diet.

Josephus, in the second book of the History of the Jewish Captivity, in the eighteenth book of the Antiquities, and in the two volumes Against Apion, describes three schools of the Jews: Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes. The last he extols with wonderful praises, because they always abstained from wives, wine, and meat, and turned daily fasting into a second nature. Philo too, a most learned man, published a volume of his own on their life. Neanthes of Cyzicus and Asclepiades of Cyprus write that in the age when Pygmalion reigned in the East there was no eating of meat. Eubulus too, who set out the history of Mithras in many volumes, tells that among the Persians there are three kinds of magi, of whom the first, who are most learned and eloquent, take nothing as food except meal and vegetables. At Eleusis it is customary to abstain even from birds and fish and certain fruits. Bardesanes, a Babylonian, divides the gymnosophists among the Indians into two schools, one of which he calls the Brahmans, the other the Samanaeans; they are of such continence that they live either on the fruit of the trees beside the river Ganges, or on the public food of rice or meal; and when the king comes to them he is accustomed to adore them, and to think that the peace of his province rests on their prayers. Euripides reports that the prophets of Jupiter in Crete abstained not only from meat but also from cooked foods. Xenocrates the philosopher writes that of the laws of Triptolemus only three precepts remain in the temple of Eleusis among the Athenians: honor parents, revere the gods, do not eat meat. Orpheus in his poem utterly detests the eating of meat. I would relate the frugality of Pythagoras, Socrates, Antisthenes, and the rest, to our confusion, were it not long and in need of a work of its own. This certainly is that Antisthenes who, after he had taught rhetoric with distinction and heard Socrates, is said to have said to his disciples: "Go and look for a teacher; for I have now found one." And at once selling what he had and distributing it publicly, he kept nothing more for himself than a little cloak. Of his poverty and labor Xenophon too is witness in the Symposium, and his own countless books, some of which he wrote in the philosophic style, others in the rhetorical. His follower was that most famous Diogenes, more powerful than King Alexander and conqueror of human nature. For when Antisthenes would accept no disciples and could not get rid of the persistent Diogenes, he at last threatened him with a stick unless he went away. Diogenes is said to have put his head under it and said: "No stick will be so hard as to separate me from your service." Satyrus, who writes the histories of illustrious men, reports that Diogenes used a double cloak because of the cold, had a bag for a storeroom, and carried a stick because of the frailty of his body, with which, now an old man, he used to support his limbs; and that he was commonly called hēmerobios, "living for the day," asking anyone for food for the present hour and receiving it. He lived in the porches of gates and the colonnades of cities. And when he rolled himself about in his jar, he joked that he had a movable house that changed with the seasons. For in the cold he turned the mouth of the jar to the south, in summer to the north, and however the sun inclined, Diogenes's palace turned with it. Once, having a wooden cup to drink from, he saw a boy drinking from his cupped hand, and is said to have dashed it to the ground, saying: "I did not know that nature too had a cup." His death too shows his virtue and continence. For when, already an old man, he was going to the Olympic games, which were celebrated with a great crowd of Greece, he is said to have been seized with a fever on the way and to have lain down at the edge of the road. When his friends wished to lift him onto a beast or into a carriage, he would not consent, but, moving to the shade of a tree, said: "Go away, I beg you, and go on to see the games. This night will prove me either victor or vanquished. If I conquer the fever, I will come to the games; if the fever conquers me, I will go down to the underworld." And there in the night, choking, he said that he was not so much dying as shutting out the fever by death. I have given the example of only one philosopher, so that our pretty, muscular gentlemen, who hardly touch the ground with the tips of their toes, whose words are in their fists and their syllogisms in their heels, who either do not know or despise the poverty of the apostles and the hardness of the cross, may at least imitate the frugality of the pagans.

So much on the arguments and examples of the philosophers. Now, passing to the beginning of the human race, that is, to our own writings, I will show first that Adam received the command in paradise to eat of the other fruits but to fast from one tree. The blessedness of paradise could not be consecrated without abstinence from food. As long as he fasted, he was in paradise; he ate and was thrown out; thrown out, he at once married a wife. He who, fasting, had been a virgin in paradise, is joined in marriage on earth when full. And yet, thrown out, he did not at once receive permission to eat meat; only the fruits of trees, the grain of crops, and green herbs were given him as food, so that even as an exile from paradise he should eat not meat, which was not in paradise, but things like the fruits of paradise. But afterwards God, seeing that the heart of man was set diligently on evil from youth, and that his spirit could not remain in them because they were flesh, condemned the works of the flesh by the flood; and, approving the most greedy gullet of men, gave them permission to eat meat, so that, understanding that all things were allowed them, they might not greatly desire what was allowed, lest they turn the command into an occasion of transgression. And yet even then fasting was commanded in part. For since some animals are called clean and others unclean, and into Noah's ark the unclean were brought in by twos and the clean in odd numbers (and certainly the eating of the unclean was taken away, or they would not have been called unclean without cause), fasting was dedicated in part, teaching abstinence from all things by cutting off some. Why did Esau lose his birthright? Was it not because of food? And he could not repair the intemperance of his gullet with tears. The people of Israel, cast out of Egypt and about to be brought into the land of promise flowing with milk and honey, long for the meats of Egypt, and melons and garlic, saying: "Would that we had died, struck by the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the pots of meat!" And again: "Who will give us meat to eat? We remember the fish we ate in Egypt for nothing, and the cucumbers and melons, the leeks, onions, and garlic. But now our soul is dried up; our eyes see nothing but manna." Despising the food of angels, they sighed for the meats of Egypt. Moses, fasting forty days and nights on Mount Sinai, proving even then that man does not live by bread alone but by every word of God, speaks with the Lord; but the people, full, make idols. He, with empty belly, receives the law written by the finger of God; they, eating and drinking and rising up to play, cast gold into a calf, and prefer an Egyptian ox to the majesty of the Lord. The labor of so many days perishes by one hour's fullness. Moses boldly breaks the tablets; for he knew that the drunken could not hear the word of God. "The beloved grew fat and stout and broad, and kicked, and forsook the Lord who made him, and departed from God his savior." That is why it is commanded in the same Deuteronomy: "Lest, when you have eaten and drunk and built fine houses, and your sheep and oxen have multiplied, and your silver and gold, your heart be lifted up and you forget the Lord your God." Finally, "the people ate, and their heart grew fat, so that they might not see with their eyes, or hear with their ears, or understand with their heart"; and the people, fed and fatter, could not bear the face of Moses fasting, horned, according to the Hebrew truth, by his conversation with God. That is why our Lord and Savior, not because of the indifference of virginity and marriage, as some think, but because of their partnership in fasting, showed Moses and Elijah with him in glory when he was transfigured on the mountain. And yet Moses and Elijah properly showed a type of the Law and the Prophets, as the Scripture of the Gospel plainly testifies: "They spoke to him of his departure which he was to accomplish at Jerusalem." For it is not virginity and marriage, but the Law and the Prophets that announce the Lord's passion. But if they contentiously say that marriage is shown in Moses and virginity in Elijah, let them hear briefly that Moses died and was buried, while Elijah, caught up in a chariot of fire, began to be immortal before he was dead. Nor could the second writing of the tablets be obtained without fasting. What drunkenness had lost, abstinence recovered. From this it is shown that we can return by fasting to paradise, from which we were thrown out by fullness. In Exodus the battle against Amalek was fought, by the prayer of Moses and of the whole people, with fasting until evening. Joshua the son of Nun commanded the sun and moon to stand still, and prolonged the fast of the victorious army for more than one day. Saul, as is written in the first book of Kingdoms, said: "Cursed be he who eats bread until evening, until I take vengeance on my enemies." And all his people did not taste, though the whole land was eating. And so great was the authority of the station once appointed to the Lord that Jonathan, who had been the cause of the victory, was detected by lot and could not escape the charge of ignorance, and stirred up his father's hand against himself, and was barely saved by the people's prayers. Elijah, prepared by a fast of forty days, saw God on Mount Horeb and heard from him: "What are you doing here, Elijah?" This voice is far more familiar than that in Genesis, "Adam, where are you?" For that one terrified a man fed and lost; this one caressed a fasting servant. Samuel strengthened the people gathered at Mizpah by proclaiming a fast, and made them stronger than their enemies. The onslaught of the Assyrians and the power of Sennacherib were broken, laid low, and defeated by King Hezekiah's tears, sackcloth, and humbling of his diet. And on the contrary, the city of Nineveh turned aside the threatened wrath of the Lord by the pity won by fasting; and Sodom and Gomorrah too would have appeased it had they been willing to repent and to win over tears of repentance with the advocacy of fasting. Ahab, a most impious king, obtained by fasting and sackcloth that he should escape God's sentence and the overthrow of his house be put off to his descendants. Hannah, the wife of Elkanah, earned by an empty belly the filling of her womb with a son. In Babylon the magi are in danger, every diviner and soothsayer and haruspex is cut down; Daniel and the three young men earn a revelation by fasting, and, fed on pulse, they are handsomer and wiser than those who ate the meat of the king's table. Then it is written that Daniel fasted three weeks, did not eat pleasant bread, that meat and wine did not enter his mouth, that he was not anointed with oil; and the angel came to him, saying, "Daniel, you are a man to be pitied." He who had appeared pitiable to God was, after his fast, terrible to the lions in the den. How beautiful a thing, which appeases God, tames lions, terrifies demons! Habakkuk is sent to him (though we have not found this in the Hebrew volumes) carrying the reapers' dinner. For a week's abstinence had earned such a waiter. David, when his son was in danger after the adultery, makes confession in ashes and fasting, saying: "For I ate ashes like bread, and mixed my drink with weeping"; and, "My knees are weak through fasting." And certainly he had already heard from Nathan, "The Lord has taken away your sin." Samson and Samuel do not drink wine and strong drink; for they were children of promise, conceived through abstinence and fasting. Aaron and the other priests, when about to enter the temple, do not drink anything that can intoxicate, lest they die. From this we understand that those die who minister in the Church without being sober. That is why Israel is reproached: "You gave my Nazirites wine to drink." Jonadab the son of Rechab commanded his sons never to drink wine. When Jeremiah offered them wine to drink and they refused, the Lord says through the prophet: "Because you have obeyed the command of Jonadab your father, a man of the line of Jonadab son of Rechab shall not fail to stand before me all the days." At the doors of the Gospel Anna the daughter of Phanuel is brought in, married once, and always fasting; and long chastity and long fasts received the virgin Lord. His forerunner and herald John is fed on locusts and wild honey, not meat; and the dwelling in the desert and the cradle of the monks begin with such food. And the Lord himself dedicated his baptism with a fast of forty days, and taught that the fiercer demons can be overcome only by prayer and fasting. The centurion Cornelius earned, by alms and frequent fasts, to receive the Holy Spirit before baptism. The apostle Paul, after hunger and thirst and his other labors, and the dangers of robbers, shipwrecks, and solitudes, lists frequent fasts. And to his disciple Timothy, suffering in his stomach and enduring very many illnesses, he urges a moderate drink of wine: "No longer drink water," he says. But in saying to him, "No longer drink water," he shows that he had drunk water before. He would not have allowed this had not frequent illnesses and pain of the stomach demanded it.

The Apostle does indeed condemn those who forbade marriage and commanded abstinence from foods that God created to be used with thanksgiving; but he points to Marcion and Tatian and the other heretics, who impose perpetual abstinence in order to destroy, despise, and abhor the works of the Creator. But we praise every creature of God, and prefer leanness to fattening, abstinence to luxury, fasts to fullness. For "a man in his labors labors for himself and does violence to his own destruction." And: "From the days of John the Baptist" (a faster and a virgin) "the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force." For we fear that at the coming of the eternal judge, as in the days of the flood and of the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, we may be caught eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage. For both the flood and the fire from heaven found fullness and marriages alike, which they destroyed. Nor is it surprising if the Apostle bids us buy and eat everything sold in the market, since for idolaters, still eating in the temples of idols as if eating things offered to idols, it was the height of abstinence merely to abstain from the foods of the Gentiles. And when he says to the Romans, "Let not him who eats despise him who does not eat, and let not him who does not eat judge him who eats," he does not assign equal merits to fasting and fullness; but he speaks against those who, believing in Christ, still Judaized; and he warns those who had believed from the Gentiles not to offend by their food those who were still weaker in faith. Indeed in what follows he says the same: "I know and am persuaded in the Lord Jesus that nothing is common of itself; but to him who thinks anything common, to him it is common. For if your brother is grieved because of food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not destroy by your food him for whom Christ died. Let not our good, then, be blasphemed. For the kingdom of God is not food and drink." And lest anyone should think this was said of fasts and not of Jewish superstition, he at once explains: "One believes he may eat all things; but he who is weak eats vegetables." And again: "One judges one day above another; another judges every day alike. Let each be fully persuaded in his own mind. He who regards the day regards it to the Lord; and he who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives thanks to God; and he who does not eat, to the Lord he does not eat, and gives thanks to God." For those who were still weak in faith, and thought some meats clean and others unclean, and thought there was a difference between one day and another (for example, that the Sabbath, the new moons, and the feast of Tabernacles were holier than the other days), are bidden to eat vegetables, which are eaten by all without distinction. But those of firmer faith believed that all meats and all days were equal.

As for what he dared to propose, that the Lord was called a glutton and wine-drinker by the Pharisees, and that he went to wedding feasts and did not despise the banquets of sinners, I think it tells in our favor. This is the Lord, a glutton as you think, who sanctified the fast of Christians by forty days; who calls blessed those who hunger and thirst; who says he has food, not what the disciples supposed, but food that does not perish forever; who forbids us to be anxious about tomorrow; who, though he is said to have hungered and thirsted and to have gone often to dinners, is not written, apart from the mystery which he expressed in the type of his passion and the proving of the reality of his body, to have served either the gullet or the belly. He tells that the rich man clothed in purple is in hell because of his feasts, and says that the poor man Lazarus is in Abraham's bosom because of his hunger. He commands that when we fast we anoint the head and wash the face, so that we fast not for the glory of men but for the Lord. He did indeed eat, after the resurrection, a piece of broiled fish and honeycomb, not out of hunger and the sweetness of the throat, but to prove the reality of his body. For whenever he raised the dead, he ordered that food be given them, lest the resurrection be thought a phantom. And Lazarus after his resurrection is written for this reason to have shared a banquet with the Lord. Nor do we say this in order to deny that fish and other foods may be taken as food (if one wishes); but as we prefer virginity to marriage, so we prefer fasting and the spirit to fullness and meat. And if Peter went up to the upper room at the sixth hour to dine, an occasional hunger does not prejudice fasts. For in this way, since the Lord too sat down tired at the Samaritan woman's well at the sixth hour and wished to drink, a necessity would lie on everyone, willing or not, to drink at that hour. And it may have been either the Sabbath or the Lord's day, and he may have been hungry at the sixth hour after a fast of two or three days; for I would never believe that the Apostle, if he had dined the day before and been stuffed with feasting, was hungry at noon the next day. And if he dined the day before and was hungry the next day before dinner, I do not think he had eaten to fullness, since he could be hungry so soon. Further, if God speaks through Isaiah that he has not chosen such a fast, saying, "In the days of your fasts your desires are found, and you strike those under you, and you fast for lawsuits and quarrels, and you strike with fists; I have not chosen such a fast, says the Lord," he teaches what kind he has chosen: "Break your bread to the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; if you see the naked, clothe him, and do not despise those of your own seed." So he did not reject fasting, but showed what kind he wanted; for the hunger of the belly is not acceptable to God when quarrels, robberies, and lusts destroy it. If God does not want fasting, how does he command in Leviticus that in the seventh month, on the tenth of the month, all the people fast until evening, and that he who does not afflict his soul die and be cut off from his people? Why do the graves of lust, where the people given to meat fell, remain in the desert to this day? And why is the fat people written to have belched quails until they were sick? Why was the man of God, at whose prophecy King Jeroboam's hand had withered, at once struck down because he ate against God's command, and the lion, which guarded the ass untouched, did not spare the prophet as he rose from his dinner? He who had worked miracles fasting paid at once the penalty of fullness when he had dined. Joel too cries out: "Sanctify a fast, proclaim a healing," so that it might be shown that a fast is sanctified by the other works, and that a sanctified fast helps the healing of sins. And as the imitation of virgins by the devil does not prejudice true virginity, so neither do the "Chastity" of Isis and Cybele and perpetual abstinence from certain foods prejudice true fasts, especially since among them the fast from bread is made up for by gorging on meat. And as the signs of the Egyptians imitated the signs that Moses did, but were not in truth (for Moses' rod swallowed the rods of the magicians), so in everything that the devil does in rivalry with God, it is not our religion that is convicted of superstition, but our negligence, in not wishing to do what even men of the world know to be good.

"The fourth and last proposition is that there are two orders, of sheep and goats, one of the righteous and one of sinners; some stand at the right hand, others at the left; and the righteous hear, 'Come, you blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world'; but to sinners it is said, 'Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.' A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree good fruit. That is why the Savior says to the Jews: 'You are of your father the devil, and you want to do the desires of your father.' He sets forth ten virgins, foolish and wise, and the five who had no oil remained outside, while the other five, who had prepared for themselves the light of good works, entered the bridal chamber with the bridegroom. He goes back to the flood and says: those who were righteous, with Noah, were saved; those who were sinners all perished together. At Sodom and Gomorrah no difference is found except the two grades of good and bad: the righteous man is rescued, the sinners are devoured by the same fire. One salvation for those set free, one destruction for those who remained. That we must not turn aside even a little from righteousness is shown by Lot's wife. And if," he says, "you object to me why the righteous man labors in peace or in persecutions, if there is no advancement and no greater rewards, know that he does this not to earn something more, but so as not to lose what he has received. In Egypt too all sinners felt the ten plagues equally, and the same darkness hung over master and servant, noble and commoner, king and populace; but for the saints of God and the people of Israel there was one light. And in the Red Sea the righteous cross over alike and the sinners are overwhelmed alike. Six hundred thousand men, apart from those unfit for war by age and sex, fall equally in the desert, and the two who were equal in righteousness are equally delivered. For forty years all Israel labors and dies alike. One measure of the omer of manna is food for all ages; their clothes are not worn out alike, their hair does not grow alike, their beards do not grow in common, their shoes last equally for all. Their feet did not grow calloused; the food tasted the same in the mouth of all. They went on to one resting place with equal labor and reward. Every Hebrew has the same Passover, the same Tabernacles, the same Sabbath, the same new moons. In the seventh year of rest he is set free without distinction of persons, and in the jubilee all debts are released for all, and the seller returns to his ancient possession."

The parable of the sower in the Gospel, in which in the good ground fruit springs up a hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold, and on the other hand a threefold variety of barrenness is shown in the bad ground, he divides into two orders, good ground and bad. "And as to the apostles, for children and wives left behind, the Lord promises in one Gospel a hundredfold, in another sevenfold, and in the age to come eternal life, and there is no difference between a hundred and seven; so in this case too the number does not prejudice anything, where the fruitfulness of this ground is proclaimed: especially since the evangelist Mark counts backward, thirty, sixty, and a hundred. The Lord says: 'He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.' As, then, Christ is in us without any difference of degrees, so we too are in Christ without degrees. 'Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.' He who is righteous loves; to him who loves the Father and the Son come and dwell in his lodging. And where there is such an inhabitant, I think nothing can be lacking to the host. And when he says, 'In my Father's house are many dwellings,' he does not mean different dwellings in the kingdom of heaven, but the number of churches throughout the world, which is known to be one through seven. 'I go,' he says, 'and will prepare a place for you,' not places. If this promise belongs properly to the twelve apostles, then Paul is excluded from this place, and the vessel of election will be thought superfluous and unworthy. John and James, because they asked for more than the others, did not obtain it; and yet their dignity was not diminished, because they were equal to the other apostles. 'Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?' Temple, he says, not temples, to show God as an inhabitant equally in all. 'I do not pray for these only, but for those who will believe in me through their word, that as you, Father, are in me and I in you, we are one, so all may be one in us. The glory you gave me I have given them; I have loved them as you loved me.' And as we are Father and Son and Holy Spirit, one God, so let there be one people in them, that is, as most dear children, partakers of the divine nature. Bride, sister, mother, and whatever other names you may think of, it is the gathering of the one Church, which is never without bridegroom, brother, son. It has one faith, and is not defiled by variety of doctrines nor split by heresies. It remains a virgin. Wherever the Lamb goes, it follows him; it alone knows the song of Christ."

"But if," he says, "you object to me, 'Star differs from star in glory,' you will hear that star differs from star, that is, the spiritual from the carnal. We love all our members equally, and do not prefer the eye to the finger, nor the finger to the ear; but in the loss of any of them the pain is common to the members. We enter this world equally and go out of it equally. There is one earthly Adam and another heavenly. He who is in the earthly is on the left and will perish; he who is in the heavenly is on the right and will be saved. He who says to his brother 'Fool' and 'Raca' will be liable to Gehenna; and he who is a murderer and adulterer will likewise be sent to Gehenna. In persecution, he who is burned, he who is strangled, he who is beheaded, he who flees, he who dies shut up in prison: there are various kinds of struggle, but one crown of the victors. Between the brother who had always been with the father and the one who was afterwards received back in repentance, there is no difference. To the laborers of the first hour, the third, the sixth, the ninth, and the eleventh, one denarius is paid equally; and, what will surprise you more, the reward begins with those who labored less in the vineyard."

By these and similar testimonies of the divine Scriptures, which the clever disputant bends to the perversity of his doctrine, who even of God's elect would not be tempted? And as the apostle John says that many Antichrists have come, this is the true preaching of Antichrist, which makes no difference between John himself and the last penitent. At the same time I wonder how our slippery serpent and Proteus changes himself into monsters of various shapes. For he who is an Epicurean in intercourse and fullness suddenly becomes a Stoic in the recompense of merits. He exchanges Jerusalem for Citium, Judea for Cyprus, Christ for Zeno. If one may not turn aside even a little from virtues, and all sins are equal, and he who steals bread when hungry is guilty of the same crime as he who kills a man, then you too are held guilty of the greatest crimes. Unless, of course, you say that you have not even the least sins, and, while all the apostles and prophets and saints, as I discussed in the second proposition, lament that they are sinners, you alone boast of righteousness. Before, you went barefoot; now your feet are not only shod but adorned. Then you were clothed in a coarse tunic and a black undershirt, dirty and pale, with a hand calloused by work; now you go about adorned in linen and silk garments and the clothes of the Atrebates and of Laodicea. Your cheeks are red, your skin shines, your hair is curled at the back and front; your little paunch sticks out, your shoulders rise, your throat swells, and from your fat jaws the words come out half choked. Certainly in such a difference of diet and dress there must be sin either here or there. Not that I assert there is sin in food or clothes, but that variation and change for the worse is close to blame. And what is blamed is far from virtue; what is far from virtue is enslaved to vice; what is convicted of vice is joined to sin. And what is sin, according to your opinion, is assigned to the left side and to the flock of goats. Either, then, return to your former way of life, so that you may be a sheep at the right hand; or, if you have changed your former view by a perverse repentance, you will be numbered among the goats, whether you will or not, even though you have shaved your beard.

But what good is it to call a one-eyed man one-eyed and to show the inconsistency of the accuser, when the series of propositions must be refuted? We do not deny that the sheep and goats on the right and left are two orders of the righteous and sinners. That a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree good, no one doubts. We too divide the ten virgins, wise and foolish, into good and bad. We are not ignorant that in the flood the righteous were set free and the sinners overwhelmed by the waters. That in Sodom and Gomorrah the righteous man was rescued and the impious consumed by fire is plain to all. We know too that Egypt was struck with ten plagues and Israel was safe. That the righteous crossed the Red Sea and Pharaoh was drowned with his army, little children sing even in school. The Scriptures teach that six hundred thousand fell in the desert because they were unbelieving, and that only two entered the land of promise; and the rest, which you described, down to the laborers in the vineyard, as two orders of good and bad. But what sort of thing is it that, because there is a division between good and bad, you assert that there is no difference among the good themselves, or on the other hand among the bad, and that it makes no difference whether in the flock someone is a ram or a little ewe; whether they have first or second wool; whether a sheep is mangy and sick, or vigorous and leaping? Especially since Ezekiel, by the authority of his prophecy, shows rational sheep and a difference between sheep and sheep, saying: "Behold, I judge between sheep and sheep, and between rams and goats, and between the fat sheep and the lean. Because you pushed with side and shoulder, and butted all the weak sheep with your horns until they were scattered." And so that we might know what sheep these are, he at once added: "But you, my flocks, the sheep of my pasture, are men." Will Paul, then, be the same as that penitent who had slept with his father's wife, because he was received back into the Church after repentance; and, because he too is at the right hand, will he shine in the same glory as the Apostle? And how is it that in one field the tares and the wheat grow together until the harvest and the consummation of the world? By what consistency are good and bad fish held in Christ's dragnet and the net of the Gospel? Why in Noah's ark, the type of the Church, were there different animals and, according to the quality of their merits, different dwellings? Why did the queen stand at the Lord's right hand in gilded clothing, surrounded with variety? Why did Joseph, in the form of Christ, have a coat of many colors? Why does the Apostle say to the Romans: "To each as God has apportioned the measure of faith. For as in one body we have many members, and all the members do not have the same function, so we, being many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one another. Having gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, whether prophecy according to the measure of faith, or ministry in ministering, he who teaches in teaching, he who exhorts in exhorting, he who gives in simplicity, he who leads in diligence," and the rest? And in another place: "One judges one day above another, another judges every day alike; let each be fully persuaded in his own mind." And to the Corinthians: "I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither he who plants is anything, nor he who waters, but God who gives the growth. He who plants and he who waters are one; but each will receive his own reward according to his own labor. For we are God's fellow workers; you are God's field, God's building." And again elsewhere: "According to the grace of God given to me, like a wise master builder I laid a foundation, and another builds on it. For no one can lay any other foundation than that which is laid, which is Christ Jesus. And if anyone builds on this foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble, each one's work will become manifest; for the day of the Lord will declare it, because it will be revealed by fire, and the fire will test what sort each one's work is. If anyone's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If anyone's work is burned, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire." If he whose work burned and perished, and who suffered the loss of his labor, will lose the reward of his labor but will himself be saved, yet not without the testing of fire; then he whose work which he built on it remains will be saved without the testing of fire, and between salvation and salvation there will certainly be some difference. And in another place too: "Let a man so account us as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Here, now, it is required among stewards that one be found faithful." Do you want to know that there is a great difference between steward and steward (I do not speak of the bad and the good, but of the good themselves who stand at the right hand)? Hear what follows: "Do you not know that those who work in the sacrifices eat of the sacrifices, and those who serve the altar share in the altar? So too the Lord has ordained that those who proclaim the Gospel should live by the Gospel. But I have used none of these things. Nor have I written these things that it should be done so in my case; for it is better for me to die than that anyone should make my glory void. For if I preach the Gospel, there is no glory for me, for necessity is laid on me; woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel. For if I do this willingly, I have a reward; but if unwillingly, a stewardship has been entrusted to me. What then is my reward? That in preaching the Gospel I may make the Gospel of Christ free of charge, so as not to abuse the right given me in the Gospel. For though I was free from all, I made myself the slave of all, that I might win the more." Can you say that those sin who live by the Gospel and share in the sacrifices? Certainly not; for the Lord ordained that those who preach the Gospel should live by the Gospel. But the Apostle, who does not use this right, but labors with his own hands so as not to burden anyone, and works night and day, and ministers to those who are with him, surely does this so that, laboring more, he may receive a somewhat greater reward.

Let us run on to the rest. "There are divisions of gifts, but the same Spirit; and there are divisions of ministries, but the same Lord; and there are divisions of operations, but the same God, who works all in all. But to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for what is profitable." And again: "As the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so also is Christ." But lest you should say that in one body the different members have one merit, he at once describes the ranks of the Church and says: "And God has set some in the Church, first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, kinds of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Do all have gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the greater gifts; and yet I show you a more excellent way." And after discussing the virtues of love at length, he added: "Whether there are prophecies, they will be done away; whether tongues, they will cease; whether knowledge, it will be destroyed. For we know in part and we prophesy in part; but when that which is perfect has come, that which is in part will be done away." And in what follows: "But now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love. Pursue love, desire spiritual gifts, but rather that you may prophesy." And again: "I wish you all to speak with tongues, but rather to prophesy; for greater is he who prophesies than he who speaks with tongues." And again: "I thank God that I speak with tongues more than you all." Where the gifts are different, and one is greater, another less, and all are called spiritual, they are certainly sheep and stand at the right hand; and between sheep and sheep there is some difference. The apostle Paul indeed speaks in humility: "I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the Church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace in me was not in vain, but I labored more than all of them; yet not I, but the grace of God which is in me." Yet in humbling himself he shows that some apostles can be less and others greater; and he who is called the vessel of election and labored more than all, God is not unjust to forget his work and to repay unequal merit with an equal reward. Next we read: "As in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive; but each in his own order." Since each will rise in his own order, the merits of those who rise are certainly different. "Not all flesh is the same flesh; there is one flesh of men, another of beasts, another of birds, another of fish. There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies; but the glory of the heavenly is one and that of the earthly another. There is one glory of the sun, another glory of the moon, another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead." This you, the learned interpreter, explained by saying that the spiritual differ from the carnal! Then both the spiritual and the carnal will be in heaven, and not only the sheep but your goats too will ascend to the kingdom of heaven. "Star," he says, "differs from star in glory": not sheep and goats, but sheep and sheep, that is, star and star. Then: "There is one glory of the sun," he says, "and another glory of the moon." Lest you should claim that star and star are the whole human race, he put the sun and moon, which you certainly cannot number among the goats. "So," he says, "is the resurrection of the dead": so that the righteous will shine with the brightness of the sun, and those in the next rank will glow with the splendor of the moon, so that one is the Morning Star, another Arcturus, another Orion, another the Mazzaroth, and the other names of stars contained in the sacred volume of Job. "For we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive what he has done through the body, whether good or bad." And lest you should say that we are made manifest before Christ's judgment seat so that the good may receive good and the bad evil, he teaches in the same letter: "He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows in blessings will also reap of blessings." Certainly both he who sows more and he who sows less are on the right side; and though there is one kind of sowing, they differ in measure and number. The same Paul writes to the Ephesians: "That the manifold and varied wisdom of God might now be made known to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places through the Church." Do you see that the varied and manifold wisdom of God is proclaimed in the different ranks of the Church? And in the same letter as well: "But to each of us grace was given according to the measure of the gift of Christ": not that the measure of Christ is different, but that as much of his grace is poured in as we are able to draw.

In vain, then, do you go over the sheep and goats, the five and five virgins, the Egyptians and Israelites, and the rest of this kind, because the recompense is not in the present but in the future. That is why the day of judgment is promised at the consummation, because now there is no judgment. For the last day would be called the day of judgment without cause if God judged now. At present we sail, we wrestle, we fight, so that at the end we may reach the harbor, be crowned, and triumph. But you perversely and slipperily put forward the conditions of the present age as examples of what is to come, when certainly here there is injustice, there justice, until we enter the sanctuary of God and understand their last end. The saint does not die in one way and the sinner in another. For those sailing on the same sea there is the same calm and storm. The robber is not killed in one way and the martyr in another. Nor are children born in one way from adultery and brothels and in another from chaste marriages. Certainly the Lord and the robbers were crucified by the same sentence. If the judgment of this age and of the age to come is the same, then those who were crucified together here will be treated alike in the future too. Paul and those who had bound him sail together, endure the storm together, and together escape to the shore when the ship is broken by the waves. You cannot deny that the merits of the prisoner and of those who bound him are different. And how was the shipwreck of the Apostle and the soldiers one? Paul the apostle afterwards relates a revelation, and says that those who were in the ship had been granted to him by the Lord. Are he to whom they are granted and those who are granted of one merit? Ten saints could rescue a sinful city. Lot with his daughters was rescued from the fire; his sons-in-law too would have been set free had they been willing to go out. And certainly there is a great difference between Lot and his sons-in-law. Zoar, one city of the Pentapolis, is set free, though it was of the same merit and lay under the same sentence as Sodom and Gomorrah, Admah and Zeboiim; it is preserved by the prayers of the holy man. See, the merit of Lot and of Zoar is different, and yet they escape the fire alike. The raiders who, in David's absence, had laid waste Ziklag and carried off their wives and children as plunder are cut down in the field on the third day, and four hundred men flee on camels. Tell me that there is any difference between those who were cut down and those who managed to flee. We read in the Gospel that the tower of Siloam fell on eighteen men and killed them, crushed beneath it. Certainly, according to the Savior's sentence, they had not been the only sinners; but they were punished to frighten the rest, so that when the pestilent man is scourged the fool may become wiser. If there is one punishment for all sinners, it is unjust that one is killed and another is warned by another's death.

You object to me the omer of manna and its one measure, and that the clothing, hair, beard, and shoes of the Israelites were alike; as if we too did not receive the body of Christ alike. In the mysteries there is one sanctification for master and slave, noble and commoner, king and soldier, although what is one becomes different according to the merits of those who receive it. "For he who eats and drinks unworthily will be guilty of violating the body and blood of Christ." Because Judas too drank from the same cup as the other apostles, will he be of one merit with the rest? And if you do not wish to accept the sacrament, certainly we all live alike, breathe one air, are watered by the same moisture, are fed by the same foods. And if foods are changed for the better by the art of cooks and made something sweeter by seasonings, such foods satisfy not nature but pleasure. We hunger alike, we feel cold alike; together we are pinched by cold and melted by heat and warmth. The sun itself and the moon and the whole choir of stars, the rains and the world run alike for us, and according to the Gospel we are all watered by the same rains, good and bad, just and unjust. If present things are examples of future things, then the sun of righteousness too will rise alike for the righteous and sinners, the impious and the holy, Christians, Jews, and Gentiles; whereas Scripture says: "But for those who fear the Lord the sun of righteousness will rise." If it will rise for those who fear, then it will set for despisers and false prophets. The sheep that stand on the right are brought into the kingdom of heaven; the goats are thrust down into hell. That parable does not describe the merits of the sheep among themselves, nor, on the other hand, those of the goats; it makes a distinction only between sheep and goats. For not everything is taught in every place; each likeness is referred to that of which it is a likeness. So the ten virgins too are examples not of the whole human race, but of the watchful and the lazy: the one always awaiting the Lord's coming, the other, giving themselves to sleep and idleness, not thinking of the judgment to come. That is why at the end of the parable it is said: "Watch, for you know neither the day nor the hour." If Noah was set free in the flood and the whole world perished, all were flesh, and that is why they perished. Either you will say that Noah's sons were not of the same merit as Noah, for whose sake his sons were set free; or you will put the cursed Ham in the same place as his father, because he was set free from the flood with him. In the passion of Christ all turned aside; together they became unprofitable; there was none who did good, no, not one. Will you dare, then, to say that Peter and the other apostles who fled denied him in the same way as Caiaphas and the Pharisees and the people crying, "Crucify, crucify such a man"? And to say nothing of the apostles, will Annas and Caiaphas and Judas the traitor seem to you guilty of the same crime as Pilate, who was unwillingly compelled to pass sentence against the Lord? The greater Judas's merit was, the greater his crime; and the greater his crime, the greater his punishment. "For the mighty will suffer torments mightily." "A bad tree does not bear good fruit, nor a good tree bad." If this is so, answer me: how did Paul, when he was a bad tree persecuting the Church of Christ, afterwards bear good fruit? And Judas, when he was a good tree working signs with the apostles, afterwards turned traitor and bore bad fruit? So a good tree does not bear bad fruit, nor a bad tree good, only as long as it continues in its goodness or its wickedness. Further, that every Hebrew keeps the Passover alike, and is set free in the seventh year, and in the jubilee, that is, the fiftieth, all property returns to its owners: this is said not of the present but of the future; because, serving during the six days of this world, on the seventh day, the true and eternal Sabbath, we shall be free; if, that is, we are willing to be free while we still serve in the world. But if we are unwilling, our ear will be pierced as a testimony of our disobedience, and we shall serve continually with the wife and children we preferred to freedom, that is, with the flesh and its works.

As for the parable of the sowing, which produces three yields on each side; and that, according to the Apostle, on the foundation of Christ one builds gold, silver, precious stones, another wood, hay, stubble; and that in a great house there are different vessels: this is plain, and to wish to contradict it is the most open shamelessness. Yet lest he exult in a lie and bring the example of the apostles to prejudice the numbers hundred, sixty, and thirty, let him know that in Matthew and Mark a hundredfold is promised to the apostles who had left all their goods; in the Gospel of Luke "much more," that is, pollaplasiona; and that in no Gospel at all is seven written for a hundred; and that he is held guilty either of forgery or of ignorance. Nor does it harm us that in one Gospel the counting begins from a hundred, in another from thirty; for all Scripture, especially the Old Testament, puts the smaller number first and so climbs step by step to the greater; for example, it says that someone was "five and seventy and a hundred years old," and yet seventy-five could not be more than a hundred because they were named first. If you do not take the difference of the numbers hundred, sixty, and thirty in a good sense, neither will you take it in a bad sense; and the fault of the seed that fell by the wayside, on the rocks, and among the thorns will be the same. But if both those three and these are each single things in a good or a bad sense, it was foolish to number six kinds for two things; especially since in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, when the parable had been told, the Savior always added: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear." Where there is nothing hidden within, we are called in vain to a mystical understanding.

But if the Father and the Son make their dwelling with believers, and you think that where Christ is guest nothing is lacking, I think that Christ dwelt in one way in the Corinthians and in another in the Ephesians; that is, in one way in those among whom the apostle Paul found many sins, in another in those to whom he set out mysteries unknown for ages; in one way in Titus and Timothy, in another in Paul. Certainly among those born of women none has arisen greater than John the Baptist. But where one is called greater, he must have had others less. And: "He who is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he." You see, then, that in heaven there is a greatest and a least, and that among the angels too and the invisible creatures there is manifold and infinite variety. Why do the apostles say, "Lord, increase our faith," if there is one measure for all? And the Lord to the disciple: "O you of little faith, why did you doubt?" In Jeremiah too we read of the kingdom to come: "Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, and I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Jacob, not according to the covenant I made with your fathers." And a little after: "I will put my law in their inward parts and write it on their heart, and I will be their God and they shall be my people; and no longer shall a man teach his neighbor and a man his brother, saying, 'Know the Lord'; for all shall know me, from the least to the greatest." From the context of that passage the prophet plainly describes the future kingdom of Christ; and how will there be least and greatest there if all will be equal? Surely in the same way as is said in the Gospel: "He who teaches and does will be called greatest in the kingdom of heaven; but he who teaches and does not do will be least." The Savior commanded that at a banquet we take the lower place, lest, when someone greater comes, we be shamefully pushed down from the higher one. If we cannot fall, but are only raised up by repentance, what does that ladder in Bethel mean, by which the angels descend and ascend, who come from heaven to earth? Certainly they were among the sheep and at the right hand while they were there. Angels descend from heaven, and Jovinian is secure in his possession of it!

Who could keep from laughing at his thinking that the many dwellings with the Father are the churches spread through the whole world, when Scripture most plainly teaches, according to John's Gospel, that the Lord spoke not of the number of churches but of the dwellings of heaven and the eternal tabernacles for which the prophet longs? "In my Father's house," he says, "are many dwellings. If it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also." The place and dwellings which Christ says he is preparing for the apostles are surely in the Father's house, that is, in the kingdom of heaven, not on earth, where he was leaving the apostles for the present. At the same time the sense of Scripture must be observed: I would tell you, he says, that I go and will prepare a place for you, if there were not many dwellings with the Father; that is, if each did not prepare a dwelling for himself not by God's generosity but by his own works. And so it is not mine to prepare but yours; for the place prepared did Judas no good, since he lost it by his own fault. In this sense too must be understood what is said to the sons of Zebedee, one of whom wanted to sit at the left and the other at the right: "You will indeed drink my cup; but to sit at my right or at my left is not mine to give you, but to those for whom it has been prepared by my Father." It is not the Son's to give; and how is it the Father's to prepare? Different and very many dwellings, he says, are prepared in heaven for very many and different virtues, which not persons but works receive. In vain, then, do you ask of me what lies in yourselves, what my Father has prepared for those who by worthy virtues will ascend to so great a dignity. Further, what he says, "I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am you may be also," he says properly to the apostles, of whom it is written in another place: "That as I and you, Father, are one, so they too may be one in us": those who have believed, who are perfect, who can say, "The Lord is my portion." But if there are not many dwellings, how is it that in both the Old Testament and the New the high priest holds one rank, the priests another, the Levites another, the doorkeepers another, the temple wardens another? And in the book of Ezekiel, where the order of the future Church and the heavenly Jerusalem is described, the priests who had sinned are degraded to temple wardens and doorkeepers; and though they are in the temple of God, that is, at the right hand, they are not among the rams but among the least of the sheep. In that river too which goes out from the temple, and waters the salt sea and gives life to all things, many kinds of fish are described. Why are there in the kingdom of heaven Archangels, Angels, Thrones, Dominions, Powers, Cherubim, and Seraphim, and every name that is named, not only in the present age but also in the age to come? There is no reason for a difference of names where there is no difference of merits. An Archangel is surely archangel of other, lesser angels. Archangels, Powers, and Dominions have others through whom they exercise power and over whom, as subjects, they rule. This is in heaven, this in the ministry of God; so do not, in your usual way, laugh and sneer at us if we put forward emperors, prefects and counts, tribunes and centurions, companies, and the rest of the order of the army.

As for his saying, "Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?", it is trivial, since divine Scripture is accustomed to call one thing in the plural and many in the singular. And yet let him know that in the temple itself there are many little rooms: there is an outer court and an inner, there are porches, there is the Holy Place and the Holy of Holies. There are kitchens too in the temple, there are store-rooms, presses, and places for keeping vessels. So too in the temple of our body there are different merits. God does not dwell in all equally, nor is he poured into all in the same measure. Some of the spirit of Moses is taken away and given to the seventy elders: I think the abundance of a river is one thing, that of streams another. A double spirit of Elijah is given to Elisha; and so the double grace worked greater signs. The one, living, raised a dead man; the other, dead, raised a dead man. The one called down famine on the people; the other in one day provided the enemy's supplies to a besieged city. And though he says, "Do you not know that your bodies are the temple of the Holy Spirit?" of the whole Church of believers, who, gathered together, form one body of Christ, here the question now is who in the body is worthy to be Christ's feet, who his head, who his eyes, who his hands. The two women in the Gospel, the penitent and the holy one, signify this: one holds his feet, the other his head. Though some think that she is one woman, and that she who first began at the feet came by degrees to the head. And as for what he objects: "I do not pray for these only, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, that as I, Father, am in you and you in me, we are one, so all may be one in us," and that the whole Christian people is one in God, as most dear children, partakers of the divine nature: we have already said above, and now it must be impressed more fully, that we are one in the Father and the Son not according to nature but according to grace. For the human soul and God are not of the same substance (as the Manichees are accustomed to say). But "You have loved them," he says, "as you have loved me." You see, then, that our being taken into the fellowship of his substance is not of nature but of grace; and he loves us because the Father loved the Son, and the members are loved, that is, in the body. "For as many as received Christ, to them he gave power to become children of God, to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." The Word became flesh, that we might pass from the flesh into the Word. The Word did not cease to be what it had been, nor did the man lose being what he was born; the glory was increased, not the nature changed. Do you want to know how we become one body with Christ? Let him who made us teach you: "He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven." And John the evangelist, who had drawn wisdom from Christ's breast, agrees with the same words, saying: "By this we understand that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God." If you believe in Christ as the apostles believed, you will become one body with them in Christ. But if it is rash to claim their faith and works for yourself when you do not have the same faith and works, you will not be able to have the same place.

Further, your boast that bride, sister, mother, and all these names belong to the one Church, and that all believers are signified by these names, tells against you. For if there is one order in the Church, and it does not have many members in one body, what need is there for it to be called bride, sister, and mother, unless it is bride to some, sister to others, mother to others? All indeed stand at the right; but one stands as a bridegroom, another as a brother, another as a son. "My little children," he says, "with whom I am again in labor until Christ is formed in you." Do you think those who are being brought to birth are of the same merit as the one who is in labor? Hence too you foolishly wished to assert that we love all members equally, and do not prefer the eye to the finger nor the hand to the ear, but that in the loss of each member the pain is common; whereas the Apostle teaches the Corinthians that some members are more honorable, others less presentable, and that the less presentable are clothed with greater honor, while those honorable in themselves do not need our care. Do you think the mouth and the belly, the eyes and the passages through which dung and urine are discharged, are of the same order and merit? "The lamp of your body," he says, "is your eye. If the eye is blind, the whole body is in darkness." If you cut off a finger or the tip of an ear, there is pain indeed, but not so great a loss, nor so great a disfigurement with the pain, as if you put out the eyes, cut off the nose, or slit the mouth. Without some members we can live; without others not at all. There are light sins, there are grave ones. It is one thing to owe ten thousand talents, another to owe a farthing. We shall be held to account both for an idle word and for adultery; but it is not the same to blush and to be tortured, to redden with shame and to be tormented for a long time. Do you think what we say is our own? Hear the apostle John: "He who knows that his brother is sinning a sin not unto death, let him ask, and he will give him life, for him who sins not unto death. But he who has sinned unto death, who will pray for him?" You see that if we pray for lesser sins, we obtain pardon; if for greater, it is hard to obtain; and that there is a great difference between sins and sins. That is why of the people of Israel, because they had sinned a sin unto death, it is said to Jeremiah: "Do not pray for this people, nor take up intercession for them, and do not oppose me, for I will not hear you." And if we all enter the world and leave the world alike, and this prejudges things to come, then righteous and sinners will be held alike before God, because now we are born and die in the same way. And if you maintain that there are two Adams, one earthly and the other heavenly, and that those who are in the earthly are at the left and those who are in the heavenly are at the right, answer me meanwhile, that I may ask you about two brothers: was Esau in the earthly or in the heavenly? No doubt you will answer that he was in the earthly. In which was Jacob? You will say at once, in the heavenly. And how was he in the heavenly, when Christ, who is called the second and heavenly Adam, had not yet come in the flesh? Either, then, you will reckon all before Christ's incarnation in the old Adam, and the righteous too will be in the earthly man, and at the left among your goats; or, if it is impious to put Isaac where Ishmael is, Jacob where Esau is, the saints where the sinners are, the last Adam will be counted from the time Christ was born of the Virgin, and the argument of the two Adams will not help your sheep and goats; for we have shown that in the first Adam there were both sheep and goats, and that in one and the same man some stood at God's right hand and others at his left. "For from Adam to Moses death reigned over all, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of Adam's transgression."

As for what you try to prove, that abuse and murder, "Raca" and adultery, an idle word and impiety are repaid with one punishment, you have already been answered above, and I will now answer briefly. Either you will deny that you are a sinner, so as not to be liable to Gehenna; or, if you are a sinner, you will be led to hell even for a light fault. "The mouth that lies," it says, "kills the soul." I suspect that you have sometimes lied, being a man; for every man is a liar, that God alone may be true, and be justified in his words, and prevail when he judges. Either, then, you will not be a man, so as not to be a liar; or, if you have lied because you are a man, you will be punished with parricides and adulterers. For there is no difference between sins! And those whom you raise from low to high will not be as grateful to you as those whom, for a light and daily sin, you have thrust into the outer darkness will be angry. And if in persecution he who is strangled, he who is beheaded, he who flees, and he who dies shut up in prison have one crown of victory in various kinds of struggle, this too tells for us. For in the martyr it is the will, from which death itself springs, that is crowned. It is mine to set myself against the fury of the Gentiles and not to deny the Lord. Then it lies in their choice either to behead, or to burn, or to shut up in prison, or to apply various kinds of penalties. But if I flee and die in solitude, the crown of the one dying will not be the same, because the cause of death is not the same, Christ. As to your saying that there is no difference at all between the brother who was always with the father and the one who was afterwards received back in repentance, I add, if you like, that the one drachma which had been lost and found was joined to the rest, and the one sheep which the good shepherd sought out, leaving the ninety-nine, and brought back, completed the number of a hundred. But it is one thing to be a penitent and beg pardon with tears, another always to be with the father. That is why, through Ezekiel, the shepherd and father speaks to the sheep brought back and to the son once lost: "And I will establish my covenant with you, and you will know that I am the Lord, and you will remember and be confounded, so that you will not open your mouth any more because of your confusion, when I have been appeased toward you in all that you have done." So that penitents may have nothing less than the righteous, confusion alone suffices them in place of all punishment. That is why it is said to them in another place: "And you will remember your most evil ways and all the crimes by which you were defiled, and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the wickednesses you have done; and you will know that I am the Lord, when I have done good to you for my name's sake, and not according to your evil ways nor according to your most wicked crimes." The son too is rebuked by the father for begrudging his brother's salvation, and being tortured by envy while the angels rejoice in heaven. And yet the likeness of the two brothers, the thrifty and the prodigal, does not refer to the merits of the whole human race, but either to the persons of the Jew and the Christian, or to those of the saints and the penitents. On this parable I dedicated a little book to Bishop Damasus while he was still living.

Further, if to the laborers of the first, third, sixth, ninth, and eleventh hours one denarius is paid, and the reward begins with those who labored last in the vineyard, here too not men of one time and one age are described, but from the beginning of the world to its end there are mysteries of different callings. At the first hour Abel and Seth were called; at the third Enoch and Noah; at the sixth Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; at the ninth Moses and the prophets; at the eleventh the people of the Gentiles, to whom the wage is paid first, because, believing in the crucified Lord, by the difficulty of faith it earned the greatness of the rewards; and many kings and prophets desired to see what we see, and did not see it. But the one denarius is not one reward, but one life and one deliverance from Gehenna. Moreover, as at the emperor's indulgence those guilty of different crimes are released from prison, and each, according to his labor or works, is in this or that state of life, so the denarius, as the indulgence of the true Emperor, sends all out of prison through baptism. Then it is our labor to prepare different things for ourselves according to the difference of virtues.

So far we have answered the propositions part by part; the following discourse will answer them all in common. The Lord says to his disciples: "Whoever wishes to be greater among you, let him be the least of all." If we are all to be equal in heaven, we humble ourselves here in vain, so as to be greater there. Of the two debtors, of five hundred denarii and fifty, he to whom more is forgiven loves more. That is why the Savior says: "I tell you, her many sins are forgiven, because she loved much; but he to whom less is forgiven loves less." He who loves less, and to whom less is forgiven, will certainly be in a lower rank. The householder, going on a journey, handed over his property to his servants, to one five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his own ability. Something similar is written in another Gospel: that a nobleman, going to a far country to receive a kingdom for himself and return, called ten servants and gave each of them a mina; of whom one gained ten minas, another five; and each, according to his ability and gain, received either ten or five cities. Further, another, who had received one talent or one mina, buried what he had received or tied it up in a handkerchief, and kept it for his master's coming. First we must consider that if the righteous labor not in hope of advancement, as our Zeno would have it, but so as not to lose what they had received, then the one who buried the mina and the talent, so as not to lose what he had received, did not sin; and the caution of the one who kept it is more to be praised than the useless labor of those who sweated without reward for their labor. Next, that this very talent which is taken from the timid or negligent servant is given not to the one who had gained less, but to the one who had gained more, that is, the one who had been set over ten cities. If number does not make rank, why did he say, "He gave to each according to his own ability"? If the gains of five talents and of ten are the same, why are not ten cities given to the one who had gained less and five to the one who had gained more? And that the Lord is not content with what we have but always desires greater things, he himself shows when he says: "Why did you not give my money to the bankers, so that when I came I might have demanded it with interest?" The apostle Paul too, knowing this, forgets what is behind and stretches out to what is ahead, that is, advances daily; nor does he keep the grace he received daintily in a handkerchief, but as a greedy trader is renewed day by day and thinks he is decreasing unless he is always increasing. Six cities of refuge are described in the Law for those who had killed men unintentionally; and these cities are priestly cities. I should like to ask whether you place these fugitives among your goats or among our sheep. If they were goats, they would be killed like other murderers and would not enter the cities of God's ministers. If you say sheep, they will certainly not be such sheep as graze with complete freedom and without fear of wolves. And it will be proved to you that they are indeed sheep, but straying ones; at the right hand, yet not standing but fleeing, until the high priest dies and, descending to the underworld, sets free the souls of the fugitives. The Gibeonites come to meet the children of Israel, and when the other nations are cut down, they are kept as woodcutters and water-carriers. And they are of such merit with God that the line of Saul was destroyed because of the wrongs done to them. Among whom will you place them? Among the goats? But they were not killed, and they are avenged by the Lord's sentence. Among the sheep? But divine Scripture says they were not of the same merit as the Israelites. You see, then, that they stand at the right, but in a much lower rank. Between David, a holy man, and Saul, a most wicked king, Jonathan was in the middle. We can neither put him among the kids, since he is worthy of the prophet's love, nor among the rams, lest we make him equal to David, especially since he too was killed. He will be, then, among the sheep, but in a lower order. And as between David and Jonathan, so between sheep and sheep you are compelled to accept differences. "The servant who knew his master's will and did not prepare, nor act according to his will, will be beaten with many stripes. But he who did not know and did things worthy of stripes will be beaten with few. For to everyone to whom much is given, much will be required of him; and to whom much is entrusted, more will be demanded of him." See, more or less is entrusted to one servant and another, and according to the quality of what was entrusted and of the sin, the number of stripes too is imposed.

The whole description of the land of Judea and of the tribes is a type of the future Church in heaven. Let us read Joshua the son of Nun, let us read the last parts of Ezekiel, and we shall see that what in the one is distributed on earth as history, in the other is promised spiritually in heaven. What do the seven and eight steps in the description of the temple mean? What again does it mean that in the Psalter, after the letters of the hundred and eighteenth psalm, by which we are taught a mystical alphabet, we arrive by fifteen steps at the point where we can sing: "Behold now, bless the Lord, all you servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord, in the courts of the house of our God"? Why do two and a half tribes live beyond the Jordan, where there is much cattle, while the remaining nine and a half either drive the former inhabitants from their homes or live with them? Why does the tribe of Levi receive no portion in the land, but the Lord is its portion; and among the Levites and priests themselves, only the high priest enters the Holy of Holies, where the cherubim and the mercy seat are? Why do the other priests use only linen garments, and not have the vestment woven with gold, blue, scarlet, purple, and fine linen? The Levites and priests of the lower rank receive wagons and oxen; those of the higher order carry the ark of the Lord on their shoulders. If you take away the order of the tabernacle, the temple, the Church; if all who are at the right hand are approved, as the saying goes, for one pay of soldiering, then bishops are in vain, presbyters for nothing, deacons without cause. Why do virgins persevere? Why do widows labor? Why do married women keep continent? Let us all sin, and after repentance we shall be the same as the apostles are!

But now we have begun to see land from the open sea, and after mountains of waves and foaming billows, and the ship now lifted on high, now plunging into the depths, little by little the harbor opens to the weary and exhausted. We have spoken of married women, widows, virgins. We have preferred virginity to widowhood, widowhood to marriage. The passage of the Apostle discussing questions of this kind has been expounded, and each objection answered. Secular literature too has been brought into view: which women were virgins, which were married once, and on the other hand what troubles the marriage bond sometimes has. We passed to the second division, in which he denies that those who have received baptism with full faith can afterwards sin. And we taught that, except God, every creature is subject to fault; not that all have sinned, but that they can sin, and the fall of their like is a fear to those who stand. Third, we came to fasts; and since our opponent's proposition had been twofold, appealing either to the philosophers or to the examples of the divine Scriptures, we too answered both. The fourth, that is the last division, had distributed sheep and goats, right and left, the righteous and sinners, into two orders, wishing to show that there is no difference between righteous and righteous, sinner and sinner. And to prove this he had heaped up countless examples from the Scriptures, as if they agreed with his sense. To this question we have answered with arguments and with examples from the Scriptures, and have crushed the old opinion of Zeno by common sense as well as by divine reading.

It now remains to address our Epicurus, wallowing in his little gardens among young men and silly women. The fat, the sleek, the whitened favor you. Add, if you like, after the Socratic jest, all the pigs and dogs, and, since you love flesh, the vultures too, eagles, hawks, and owls. The multitude of Aristippus will never frighten us. Whomever I see handsome, whomever curled, with hair arranged and cheeks ruddy, they belong to your herd, or rather they grunt among your pigs. Those of our flock are sad, pale, poorly dressed, and like strangers in this world; though silent in speech, they speak by dress and bearing: "Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged; I have dwelt with the dwellings of Kedar," that is, in the darkness of this world, because "the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it." Do not boast that you have many disciples. The Son of God taught in Judea, and only twelve apostles followed him. "I have trodden the winepress alone," he says, "and of the nations there is no man with me." In his passion he remained alone, and even Peter's constancy toward him wavered; but the whole people applauded the teaching of the Pharisees, saying: "Crucify, crucify such a man. We have no king but Caesar"; that is, we follow vices, not virtues; Epicurus, not Christ; Jovinian, not the apostle Paul. That many assent to your opinion is a sign of pleasure; for they do not so much approve you speaking as favor their own vices. In the circles of the streets every day a sham soothsayer beats the buttocks of fools and, with a twisted stick, knocks the teeth of those who bite; and yet there is always someone to be taken in. And do you count it great wisdom if more pigs run after you, whom you fatten as bacon for Gehenna? Since your preaching, and the baths in which men and women wash together, all the incontinence which formerly covered burning lust with the garments, as it were, of modesty has been stripped bare and exposed: what was hidden before is now in the open. You have revealed such disciples; you have not made them. Your teaching has achieved this, that sins do not even have repentance. Your virgins, whom with most prudent counsel, such as no one ever read or heard, you taught from the Apostle, "It is better to marry than to burn," have turned secret adulterers into open husbands. The Apostle did not urge this, not the vessel of election. It is Virgil's counsel:

It is nearly four hundred years since the preaching of Christ has shone in the world. Since then countless heresies have torn his tunic; almost all error had come from the Chaldean, Syriac, and Greek languages. Basilides, the master of luxury and the most shameful embraces, after so many years has been transformed into Jovinian as into Euphorbus, so that the Latin language too might have its heresy. Was there no other province in the whole world to receive the preaching of pleasure, into which the twisting serpent might creep, but the one which Peter's teaching had founded upon the rock, Christ? The standard of the cross and the austerity of preaching had destroyed the temples of idols; on the other side, the luxury of the penis, the belly, and the throat strives to overthrow the strength of the cross. That is why God speaks through Isaiah: "My people, those who call you blessed deceive you and confuse the paths of your feet." And through Jeremiah as well: "Flee from the midst of Babylon, and let each save his soul; and do not believe the false prophets, who say 'Peace, peace,' and there is no peace"; who keep repeating, "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord." "Your prophets have seen for you false and foolish things; they have not uncovered your iniquity to call you to repentance"; "who devour God's people as they eat bread; they have not called upon God." Jeremiah, announcing captivity, was stoned by the people. Hananiah the son of Azzur broke wooden yokes for the present and prepared iron ones for the future. False prophets always promise sweet things and please for a little while. Truth is bitter, and those who preach it are filled with bitterness. For the Lord's Passover is celebrated with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth, and is eaten with bitter herbs. A fine voice indeed, for the bride of Christ to hear among virgins and widows and the celibate (whence the very name is given them, because those who abstain from intercourse are worthy of heaven): "Fast seldom, marry often. For you cannot fulfill the works of marriage unless you take honeyed wine, meat, and nuts. Strength is needed for lust. Flesh soon wastes and withers. Do not fear sexual immorality. He who has once been baptized in Christ cannot fall; for he has the comfort of marriage to work off his lusts. And even if you do fall, repentance will restore you; and you who were hypocrites in baptism will be of solid faith in repentance. Nor be troubled, thinking that there is any difference between the righteous and the penitent, and that a lower rank grants pardon but takes away the crown. For there is one reward. He who stands at the right will enter the kingdom of heaven." By these counsels your swineherds are richer than our shepherds, and the goats drag very many she-goats with them. "They have become like maddened horses after the mares"; as soon as they see women, they neigh after them, and, shameful to say, console their incontinence with examples from the Scriptures. And the silly women themselves, wretched and not deserving pity, chanting their teacher's words ("For what does God seek but seed?"), have lost not only chastity but shame as well, and defend their lust with greater boldness than they practice it. You have besides many reserves in your army, buffoons and skirmishers on guard, fat, groomed, sleek, loud, who defend you with fists and heels. The nobles make way for you, the rich kiss your head. For had you not come, the drunken and belching could not enter paradise! Well done, your virtue, or rather your vices! You have in your camp Amazons too, with one breast bare and arm and knee naked, challenging the men who come against them to the battle of lusts. And since you are a wealthy householder, in your aviaries not turtledoves but hoopoes are kept, which fly around all the dens of fetid pleasure. Pluck me, scatter me, throw at me whatever charges you like, accuse me of luxury and delicacies: you will love me more if I am such, for I shall be of your herd.

But I will speak to you, who have wiped out by the confession of Christ the blasphemy written on your forehead. Mighty city, city mistress of the world, city praised by the Apostle's voice, interpret your name. Rome is a name either of strength among the Greeks or of loftiness according to the Hebrews. Keep what you are called: let virtue make you lofty, not pleasure low. The curse which the Savior threatened against you in the Apocalypse you can escape by repentance, having the example of the Ninevites. Beware of the name of Jovinian, which is derived from the idol Jove. The Capitol is squalid, the temples and ceremonies of Jupiter have fallen. Why should his name and his vices flourish among you? Even under the kings, and under Numa Pompilius, your ancestors more readily accepted the continence of Pythagoras than under the consuls the luxury of Epicurus.