Marriage and Virginity (continued)
chosen out of love, at least let the desires of the flesh be curbed by fear. If the effort is made because there is fear, because the effort is made there will also be love. We must not trust in our own strength, but must combine effort with prayer, so that the one who deters us from evil will fill us with goodness.
A New Objection from Pollentius
14, 14. Let us reply also to that other point, where you think that, if it is wrong to marry again while they are still alive, husbands whose wives commit adultery will want them to be dead and will be driven to punish them relentlessly.†12 To exaggerate that cruelty you said: "Dearest father, this does not seem to me to be what God intends, when it leaves no room for kindness and religious duty." You say this here, as though the reason why husbands should pardon wives who commit adultery is that it is right for them to marry again; and if this is not right they will not spare them, in order to make it right. On the contrary, the reason why they ought to show mercy to the sinful women is to obtain mercy themselves for their own sins.
Those whose desire is to live a life of celibacy after divorcing their wives have even more reason to act in this way. The greater their desire to become holier, the more they ought to be more merciful, so that, by not taking human revenge themselves for their wives' violation of chastity, they will have divine assistance in preserving their own chastity. They should call to mind especially those words of the Lord: Let the one who is without sin cast the first stone (Jn
8:7). It does not say, "the one who is without that sin," as we are talking about men who are not unchaste, but the one who is without sin; and if they say they are like that, they delude themselves, and the truth is not in them (1 Jn 1:8). So, if they do not delude themselves, and the truth is in them, they will not be harsh and thirsting for blood. Knowing they themselves are not without sin they will pardon in order to obtain pardon for themselves, and they will leave room for kindness and religious duty. On the contrary, there is no room for these considerations if it is sexual license, and not concern for religious duty, that wins their pardon for their wives' sins, that is to say, if they spare them because they are allowed to marry someone else, rather than because they themselves want to be spared by God.
15. How much better it is, and more honorable, and in short more worthy of the name of Christian, to get them not to insist on the blood of their adulterous wives by telling them what