Marriage and Virginity
virgin, but who is obedient, which would we say is better? The one who is less commendable than if she were a virgin, or the one who is damnable though a virgin? Likewise, if you compared a drunken virgin with a sober married woman, who would hesitate to make the same judgment? Marriage and virginity are indeed both good, though one better than the other; but sobriety and drunkenness, like obedience and insolence, are respectively good and bad. It is better to have only good things, even though lesser ones, than to have a great good together with a great evil. Even with bodily goods, it is better to have the stature of Zacchaeus and good health than that of Goliath and a fever.
30. Clearly the right question to ask is not whether a virgin who is utterly disobedient is comparable to an obedient wife, but whether a less obedient virgin is comparable to a more obedient wife; for married chastity is still chastity, and therefore a good thing, although it is inferior to virginal chastity. The virgin is as inferior in the good of obedience as she is superior in the good of chastity. To compare the two, and decide which is the better, one must first compare obedience and chastity themselves and see how obedience is the mother of all the virtues. The reason why there can be obedience without virginity is that virginity is a counsel, not a command. I am speaking of that obedience whereby the commandments are obeyed. Accordingly, there can be obedience to the commandments without virginity, but not without chastity. For chastity there must be no fornicating, no adultery, no defiling oneself with unlawful intercourse. Whoever does not abide by this acts contrary to God's commandments, and on that account is excluded from the virtue of obedience. On the other hand, virginity is possible without obedience, because a woman who accepts the counsel of virginity and preserves her virginity can show contempt for the commandments, like the many consecrated virgins we know who are gossipers, inquisitive, drunkards, quarrelsome, avaricious and proud; all these things are forbidden by the commandments, and, as happened with Eve, they will bring destruction for the offense of disobedience. Therefore, not only should an obedient woman be more highly regarded than a disobedient one, but a more obedient married woman should be more highly regarded than a less obedient virgin.
31. Because of this obedience that father, who was not without a wife, was prepared to lose his only son by killing him himself.†54 It is not wrong for me to call him his only son, as he heard the Lord say about him, Your line will take its name from Isaac (Gn 21:12). How much more would he have been swift to take heed if the command had been to remain unmarried?