Marriage and Virginity
55. Consider the value of all these things, and put them on the scales of love, and give to him in return whatever love you would have had to spend in marriage.
56. It is good that he wants interior beauty from you, when he has given you the power to become children of God.†78 He does not look for beauty of body, but the moral beauty of your control over the body. He is not a person anyone can tell lies to about you, to make him jealous and angry. See how confidently you can love him when you have no fear of incurring his displeasure because of false suspicions. A husband and wife love each other because they see each other, but they worry about what they do not see. While they suspect something secret, usually something not happening, they cannot rejoice with any assurance about what is in the open. In your case, however, in your beloved, whom you do not see with your eyes but behold by faith, there is nothing true that you can reproach him with, and you have no fear of offending him because of something that is not true. So, if you would have owed great love to your husband, how greatly should you love him on whose account you chose not to have a husband? He was fastened to the cross for you; hold him tight to every part of your heart. Let him occupy in your mind all the room you did not allow to be taken by marriage. It is not right that you should love him only a little, when for his sake you have held back even from love that was licit. In you who have love like this for the one who is gentle and humble of heart,†79 I have no great fear of there being pride.
Conclusion
56, 57. As best our limitations have allowed, we have now said enough both about the sacredness, from which you get the special name, "sacred virgins,"†80 and about the humility, by which any greatness ascribed to you is protected. In addition to what I have written in this essay, take the advice given to you, with greater right to do so, by those three young men who were kept cool in the midst of the fire by the one for whom they had such burning love.†81
The hymn in which they gave glory to God has much fewer words, but it carries greater weight of authority. Combining humility with holiness in their praise of God, they taught with utmost clarity that the holier one's calling, the more one should be on one's guard not to be deceived by pride. So, you too, give praise to him who grants to you that in midst of the burning heat of this world, even though you do not marry, you do not burn.†82 Praying on our