Marriage and Virginity
should marry; for it is better to marry than to burn (1 Cor 7:9). What then if some rich woman spends a great deal of money on the good work of buying slaves of various nations in order to make them Christian? Will she not procure the birth of members for Christ more abundantly and fruitfully than would be possible from her womb, however fertile? She still will not dare to compare her money to the gift of holy virginity. Yet if physical motherhood truly makes up for lost virginity, because the children born become Christians, there will be even more to be gained from this enterprise if the loss of virginity is in return for payment of a large sum of money. With that money a much greater number of children can be purchased, to become
Christians, than could be born from one woman's womb, however prolific.
Producing Virgins Does Not Make Marriage Equal to Virginity
10. If this is a stupid thing to say, then let the women of faith who are married hold on to the good thing that is theirs. We wrote about that, to the extent it seemed necessary, in another volume. But also, as they have very properly been accustomed to do, let them hold in greater honor the superior perfection of consecrated virgins. This is the subject of the present treatise.
10. They should not compare their own worth to that of those who practice celibacy, even on the grounds that they give birth to virgins. This is not something good about marriage, but about nature. God so established it that from any sexual union between human beings of the two sexes, whether proper and lawful or perverse and illicit, no woman is born except as a virgin. None, however, is born a consecrated virgin. So it happens that a virgin is born even from rape, but a consecrated virgin not even from marriage.
Consecration Is What Makes a Virgin
11, 11. What we extol in virgins is not that they are virgins, but that they are virgins consecrated in holy chastity to God. I do not say it without thought: in my view a married woman is better off than a virgin who hopes to marry. She already has what the other still wants, especially if she is not yet even engaged to someone. The one who is married is keen to please the one man whom she has married; the other is keen to please many, not being sure who will be the one she will marry. The only thing that separates the purity of her thoughts from those of the crowd is that she is not looking in the crowd for an adulterer, but for a