To His Wife 2.1–2.8

In my last letter, my dearest fellow servant in the Lord, I set out as well as I could what a holy woman should follow when her marriage has been taken away by whatever lot. Now let us turn to second counsels, out of regard for human weakness, warned by the examples of certain women who, when the opportunity for continence was offered them by divorce or by a husband's death, not only threw away the chance of so great a good, but even in marrying again did not wish to remember the discipline, that they should above all marry in the Lord. So my mind is troubled, lest I, who lately urged you to persevere as the wife of one man and in widowhood, should now, by mentioning marriage, offer you a slope to slip on. But if you are wholly wise, you certainly know that you must keep to what is more profitable. Since that is difficult, and not without constraints, and this the highest purpose of life, I paused over it; nor would I have had reason to write to you about this too, had I not now perceived a graver cause for concern. For the greater the continence of the flesh that serves widowhood, the more pardonable it can seem if it is not sustained; for pardon for difficult things is then easy. But the more feasible it is to marry in the Lord, as being within our power, the more blameworthy it is not to keep what you can. Add to this that the apostle, concerning widows and the unmarried, advises them to remain so when he says, “I wish all to persevere after my example”; but concerning marrying in the Lord, when he adds, “Only in the Lord,” he no longer advises but expressly commands. In this matter above all, then, unless we obey, we are in danger; because one may neglect advice with impunity sooner than a command, since the one comes from counsel and is set before the will, while the other comes down from authority and is bound on necessity; in the one case it seems liberty, in the other contumacy, to go wrong.

So when a certain woman in these days took her marriage away from the church and was joined to a gentile, and I recalled that this had been done by others before, wondering either at their wantonness or at the betrayal of their advisers, since no Scripture offers license for such a deed, I said: Surely they do not flatter themselves with that chapter of First Corinthians where it is written: “If any of the brothers has an unbelieving wife and she consents to the marriage, let him not dismiss her; likewise a believing woman married to an unbeliever, if she finds her husband consenting, let her not dismiss him; for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife by the believing husband; otherwise your children would be unclean.” Perhaps, understanding this admonition simply of believers who are joined in marriage, they think it lawful also to marry unbelievers. Far be it that whoever interprets it so should knowingly deceive himself. But it is plain that this Scripture refers to those believers who were found by the grace of God in a marriage with a gentile, according to the very words. “If any believer,” he says, “has an unbelieving wife.” He does not say, “takes an unbelieving wife.” He shows that one already living in marriage with an unbelieving woman, and soon converted by the grace of God, ought to persevere with his wife, lest, that is, anyone who had attained faith should think he must separate from a woman now in a way foreign and strange to him. So he also adds the reason, that we are called in peace to the Lord God, and that the unbeliever can be won by the believer through the intercourse of marriage. The very conclusion also confirms that it is to be understood so: “As each one is called by the Lord,” he says, “so let him persevere.” But it is gentiles who are called, I think, not believers. But if he had pronounced absolutely about the marriage of believers only, he would have permitted the holy to marry anyone at large. And if he had permitted it, he would never have added a pronouncement so different from and contrary to his permission, saying: “A woman whose husband has died is free; let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord.” Here certainly there is nothing to reconsider; for what might have been reconsidered, the Spirit has proclaimed: lest we misuse what he says, “let her marry whom she will,” he added, “only in the Lord,” that is, in the name of the Lord, which undoubtedly means to a Christian. That Holy Spirit, then, who prefers widows and the unmarried to persevere in integrity, who urges us to follow his example, prescribes no other form of renewed marriage than in the Lord; to this condition alone he concedes the loss of continence: “Only,” he says, “in the Lord.” He has added weight to his law: “Only.” With whatever tone and manner you pronounce that word, it is weighty: it both commands and advises, both enjoins and exhorts, both asks and threatens. The sentence is strict and clear, and eloquent in its very brevity. So the divine voice is wont to speak, so that you understand at once and obey at once. For who could fail to understand that the apostle foresaw many dangers and wounds to faith in marriages of this kind, which he forbids, and first of all guarded against the defilement of holy flesh in gentile flesh? Here someone says: “What difference, then, is there between the one who is chosen by the Lord while in a marriage with a gentile, and the one who was a believer earlier, that is, before the marriage, that they should not equally guard their flesh, since the one is kept from marriage with an unbeliever, and the other is commanded to persevere in it? Why, if we are defiled by a gentile, is the one not separated, just as the other is not bound?” I will answer, if the Spirit grants, alleging first of all that the Lord holds it more pleasing that a marriage not be contracted than that it be dissolved at all: indeed he forbids divorce, except for the cause of sexual immorality, but commends continence. Let the one, then, have the necessity of persevering, and the other also the power of not marrying. Then, if according to Scripture those who are overtaken by faith in a marriage with a gentile are not defiled, because the others are sanctified together with them, without doubt those who were sanctified before marriage, if they mingle with strange flesh, cannot sanctify that flesh in which they were not overtaken. But the grace of God sanctifies what it finds. So what could not be sanctified is unclean; and what is unclean has no part with the holy, except to defile and slay it with its own.

If these things are so, it is clear that believers who enter into marriages with gentiles are guilty of sexual immorality and must be kept from all communion with the brotherhood, according to the letter of the apostle, who says that with such a person one must not even eat. Or shall we produce marriage contracts about it before the Lord's tribunal and plead that a marriage was duly contracted which he himself forbade? Is what is forbidden not adultery, is it not sexual immorality? Does the admission of a strange man violate the temple of God any less, mingle the members of Christ with the members of an adulteress any less? So far as I know, we are not our own, but bought with a price; and with what a price! The blood of God. So in harming this flesh we harm him directly. What did he mean who said that it is indeed a sin to marry an outsider, but a very small one, when, apart from the injury to flesh that belongs to the Lord, every willful sin against the Lord is great? For the greater the power of avoiding it was, the more it is burdened with the charge of contumacy. Let us now review the other dangers or wounds to faith, as I said, foreseen by the apostle, most harmful not only to the flesh but also to the spirit itself. For who would doubt that faith is daily worn away by commerce with an unbeliever? “Bad conversations corrupt good morals”: how much more living together and inseparable intercourse? Any believing woman must attend to God. And how can she serve two masters, the Lord and a husband, and a gentile at that? For in attending to a gentile she will display gentile things: beauty, elaborate hairdressing, worldly elegance, baser allurements, even the secrets of marriage stained, not as among the saints, where the duties of the sex are carried out modestly and with moderation, with honor for the very necessity, as under the eyes of God.

But let her see how she pays her duties to her husband. To the Lord she certainly cannot give satisfaction according to discipline, having at her side a servant of the devil, his master's agent for hindering the pursuits and duties of believers: so that if a station is to be kept, the husband makes an appointment at the baths for that day; if fasts are to be observed, the husband holds a banquet the same day; if she must go out, never is there more household business in the way. For who would let his wife go round from street to street to other people's houses, and indeed all the poorer hovels, for the sake of visiting the brothers? Who will gladly let her be taken from his side for night gatherings, if need be? Who, finally, will calmly bear her staying out all night at the Easter solemnities? Who will let her go without suspicion of his own to that Lord's supper which they defame? Who will allow her to creep into prison to kiss the chains of a martyr? And then to meet one of the brothers for the kiss? To offer water for the saints' feet? To snatch food or cup for them, to long for them, to keep them in mind? If a brother comes from abroad, what hospitality is there in a stranger's house? If something must be given to someone, the granary and the storeroom are shut.

“But someone puts up with our practices and does not object.” This, then, is the sin: that gentiles know our practices, that we are under the knowledge of the unrighteous, that it is by their favor if we do anything. One who puts up with them cannot fail to know; or if things are hidden from him because he does not put up with them, he is feared. But since Scripture commands both, to work for the Lord both without another's knowledge and without pressure on us, it makes no difference on which side you sin: either against your husband's knowledge, if he is tolerant, or in conflict with yourself, while you avoid him if he is intolerant. “Do not throw your pearls to swine,” he says, “lest they trample them and turn and overturn you too.” Your pearls are also the marks of your daily conduct. The more you take care to hide them, the more suspect you will make them and the more they will be seized on by gentile curiosity. Will you escape notice when you sign your little bed and your body, when you blow away something unclean with a breath, when you even get up at night to pray, and will you not seem to be doing some magic? Will your husband not know what you taste secretly before all food? And if he knows it is bread, does he not believe it to be what it is said to be? And will anyone, ignorant of the reason for these things, simply put up with them? Without a groan? Without suspecting whether it is bread or poison? Some put up with them, but so as to trample on and mock such women, keeping their secrets in reserve for the danger they believe in, in case they are wronged; they put up with those whose dowries they turn into the price of silence by threatening to denounce the name, being ready, of course, to go to law before a spy as judge. Most women, not foreseeing this, come to recognize it only when their property has been tortured away or their faith lost.

The handmaid of God lives amid others' labors, and among them, on all the feast days of demons, on all the solemnities of kings, at the beginning of the year, at the beginning of the month, she will be troubled by the reek of incense. And she will go out from a door decked with laurel and lamps, as from a new meeting place of public lusts; she will recline with her husband often at club dinners, often in taverns; and she who once used to serve the saints will sometimes serve the wicked; and will she not recognize from this a foretaste of her condemnation, as she waits on those whom she was to judge? Whose hand will she long for? Of whose cup will she partake? What will her husband sing to her, or what will she sing to her husband? She will hear something, no doubt, dining from the tavern! What mention of God from Gehenna? What invocation of Christ? Where is the nourishment of faith from the reading of Scripture interspersed? Where is the Spirit? Where the refreshment? Where the divine blessing? All is strange, all hostile, all condemned, sent in by the evil one to wear away salvation.

If these things can happen to those too who, having attained faith, remain in a marriage with a gentile, they are nevertheless excused, as having been overtaken by God in that state; they are commanded to persevere, they are sanctified, and they receive hope of winning their partner. If, then, a marriage of this kind is valid before God, why should it not also turn out well, so as not to be so harassed by pressures and straits and hindrances and defilements, having already on one side the patronage of divine grace? For the one called from among the gentiles to some heavenly virtue, by proofs of some divine favor, is a terror to the gentile, so that he objects less, plots less, spies less. He has felt great wonders, he has seen evidences, he knows the other has been made better; so he too becomes a candidate for God through fear. So those in whom God's grace has made the acquaintance are the more easily won. But it is another thing to descend of one's own accord and freely into what is forbidden. What does not please the Lord certainly offends the Lord, certainly is brought in by the evil one. This will be the sign: that the Christian name pleases only suitors. That is why men are found who do not shudder at such women, in order to ruin them, to carry them off, to shut them out from faith. You have the reason why you should not doubt that no marriage of this kind runs well, since it is arranged by the evil one but condemned by the Lord.

Besides this, let us ask whether we are right, as truly discerners of the divine sentences. Do not even among the nations the strictest masters and those most tenacious of discipline forbid their slaves to marry outside the household? Lest, that is, they run into wantonness, neglect their duties, bring out their masters' goods to strangers. Have they not moreover decreed that those who, after warning from the masters, have persisted in intercourse with others' slaves are to be claimed into slavery? Shall earthly disciplines be held stricter than heavenly prescriptions, so that gentile women joined to strangers lose their freedom, while ours join the devil's slaves to themselves and remain in their own status? No doubt they will deny that the Lord's warning was given them through his apostle! What cause shall I assign for this madness, except weakness of faith, always prone to the desires of worldly pleasures? This indeed is found most among the wealthier. For the richer a woman is and the more puffed up with the title of matron, the more spacious a house she seeks for her burdens, as a field in which her ambition may run. To such women the churches are mean. It is hard for a rich person to be in the house of God, and if there is one, hard for her to be unmarried. What then are they to do? Where but from the devil are they to seek a husband fit to furnish a sedan chair, mules, and hairdressers of outlandish height? A Christian, even a rich one, might perhaps not provide these. I beg you, set before yourself the examples of gentile women. Many, noble in birth and blessed in fortune, join themselves here and there to men of low birth and middling means, found for luxury or pursued for license. Some give themselves to their freedmen and slaves, despising the opinion of all people, provided they have men from whom they fear no hindrance to their freedom. Does a Christian woman, a believer, disdain to marry a believer of lesser means, when she will be richer in a poor husband? For if the kingdom of heaven belongs to the poor, it does not belong to the rich; the rich woman will find more in the poor man. She will be endowed with a greater dowry from the goods of him who is rich in God. Let her be his equal on earth, who in heaven perhaps will not be. Must one doubt and inquire and deliberate again and again whether he to whom God has entrusted his own wealth is fit for the dowry brought in? How shall we suffice to tell the happiness of that marriage which the church arranges, the offering confirms, the blessing seals, angels report, and the Father holds as ratified? For not even on earth do sons marry rightly and lawfully without the consent of their fathers. What a yoke is that of two believers, of one hope, one vow, one discipline, the same service! Both are brothers, both fellow servants, with no separation of spirit or flesh. Indeed they are truly two in one flesh. Where there is one flesh, there is one spirit too. Together they pray, together they prostrate themselves, together they keep fasts, teaching one another, exhorting one another, supporting one another. Both are equally in the church of God, equally at the banquet of God, equally in straits, in persecutions, in refreshments. Neither hides anything from the other, neither avoids the other, neither is a burden to the other. The sick is visited freely, the needy sustained. Alms without torment, sacrifices without anxiety, daily diligence without hindrance; no furtive signing, no fearful greeting, no silent blessing. Psalms and hymns sound between the two, and they challenge each other as to who will sing better to their Lord. Seeing and hearing such things Christ rejoices. To these he sends his peace. Where two are, there he is too; and where he is, there the evil one is not. These are the things which that saying of the apostle leaves for us to understand in its brevity. Suggest these things to yourself, if need be. Turn yourself away by them from the examples of certain women. It is not lawful for believers to marry otherwise; it is not expedient.