Marriage and Virginity (continued)
from immoderate and unlawful pleasures, it is persecuting it as an enemy rather than disciplining it for its own good. The body is indeed different in nature from the soul, but it is not extraneous to human nature. The body is not part of the soul, but the human being is composed of soul and body; and when God redeems someone, he certainly redeems the whole person. Accordingly, when the savior himself saw fit to redeem in us the whole of what he made, he took on a whole human nature. As for those who hold an opinion contrary to this truth, what good does it do them to keep their passions under control, if indeed they do keep any under control? If that continence of theirs is so unclean, what can become clean in them through continence? It ought not even be called continence. The view they hold is the devil's poison, but continence is a gift from God. Not everyone who suffers something or even suffers all kinds of anguish with great patience has that virtue called patience, which too is a gift from God. Many people put up with great torments rather than confess their crimes or betray their accomplices; many do so to satisfy their burning passions and to obtain, or to avoid losing, the things they are attached to by a bond of perverse love; many do it in the cause of various pernicious errors that hold them fast; and we would not think of saying that any of these had true patience. Similarly, those who practice some self-control, or even have marvelous control over the passions of mind and body, cannot all be said to have that continence whose value and honor we are discussing. Incredible though it seems, there are some who practice continence because of their incontinence, as, for example, when a woman avoids incontinence with her husband, because she promised this to a partner in adultery.
Some do it because of their injustice, as, for example, when a spouse refuses to have sexual union with the other spouse, because he or she can now control that bodily urge. Some practice self-control too because they are deceived by false beliefs and with futile hope are striving for vanities. Included among these are all heretics and anyone who is deceived by any error in the name of religion. If their continence was true continence, then their faith would be true faith. But since this cannot even be called faith, because it is false, so too, beyond question, that other is not worthy of the name of continence. Are we going to say that continence, which we say with absolute truth is a gift from God, is a sin? Far from our hearts be any such deplorable insanity! The blessed apostle, however, has said, Everything that does not come from faith is a sin (Rom 14:23). If it does not have faith, therefore, neither can it be called continence.
27. There are also those who clearly refrain from pleasures of the flesh in the service of malicious demons, in order to obtain through their agency wicked pleasures whose appeal and ardor they do not restrain. To say something about this, and be silent about the rest because of the length of the discourse, there are some who do not even touch their wives, while at the same time, as though purified, they contrive by magical arts to go to other men's wives. O wonderful continence, or, rather, unparalleled wickedness and impurity! If it were true continence, it should keep them from adultery, instead of carnal desire keeping them from their wives in order to commit adultery. Continence in marriage usually allows some freedom to these carnal desires, but it reins them in and keeps them under control. Not even in marriage are they let go with unlimited freedom. They are limited either by what is required because of the weakness of one's spouse (which the apostle does not insist on as a commandment, but allows as pardonable),†15 or to what is appropriate for the purpose of having children (which in earlier times was the sole reason why the holy fathers and mothers had bodily union with each other). In so doing, that is, controlling carnal desire in married couples, and placing certain limits on it, and bringing a certain order to its lively and unruly stirrings by imposing definite limits, it uses the evil in people for good. It makes them good and wants to make them perfect, just as God makes use even of evil persons for the sake of the good persons he makes perfect.
Continence Pertains to the Spirit as well as to the Body
13, 28. In no way, therefore, should we say that those who practice self-control in the service of errors, or who overcome some minor urges in order to satisfy stronger ones they cannot resist, have the continence about which scripture says, And this itself was a gift of wisdom, to know whose gift this was (Wis 8:21). The true continence that comes from above does not aim to suppress some evils in order to have other evils, but to cure all evils with good. To sum up briefly the way it acts, the function of continence is to be on the watch to restrain and heal any enjoyment of pleasures that are in conflict with the pleasures of wisdom. Consequently those who restrict it to restraining only the pleasures of the flesh undoubtedly define it too narrowly. Those who do not add the word "bodily," but who say quite generally that it belongs to continence to rule over passion and desire, certainly do better. The desire involved in sinning is not only bodily desire, but also that of the soul. If there is bodily desire in fornication and drunkenness, can we also say that enmities, disputes, jealousy, and finally animosity, are activities of bodily pleasure, and not rather stirrings and disturbances in the soul?†16 The apostle, to be sure, called all these "deeds of the flesh," whether they relate