Marriage and Virginity
scripture says: Forgive the injustice of others, and when you pray your sins will be forgiven.
Can someone maintain resentment toward a fellow human being, and then look for leniency from God? Can one have no compassion for a human being like oneself, and yet plead for one's own sins? Though flesh and blood oneself, one maintains the resentment; who will forgive that person's own sins (Sir 28:2-5)? And tell them what the gospel says: Forgive and you will be forgiven (Lk 6:37); and this is to enable us to say, Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us (Mt 6:12). And quote the apostle: Not returning evil for evil to anyone (Rom 12:17); and any similar texts of holy scripture, by whose influence a human spirit stirred by the desire for vengeance will relent because it is Christian.
The Christian Should Forgive the Adulterous Spouse
15. How much better it is, I tell you, for us to say these things than to say: "Simply divorce those adulteresses, and do not seek their blood. Your new wives will comfort you in any grief you suffer from their wrongdoing. If their living was a barrier to you marrying someone else, you would be justified in wanting to remove them from the band of the living. But now that you are allowed to enter into other marriages, even while they are still living, why are you so intent on taking their lives?" Do you not notice how unchristian in character is our advice, if we speak in this way? Moreover we speak a falsehood, when we tell them they are allowed to do what they are not allowed to do, namely, marry other women while their first wives are still alive. If they pardon them for this reason, they do not pardon them out of respect for God, but for the freedom to marry again. Finally, I ask you whether, either by the old law of God or by Roman law, a Christian husband is allowed to take the life of an adulteress? If it is allowed, then it is better for him to refrain from both actions, namely, the punishment that is lawful because the woman has sinned, and the marriage that is unlawful because she is still living. If he insists on choosing one or the other, it is more acceptable for him to do what is lawful for him to do, have the adulteress punished, than to do what is not lawful, commit adultery while she is still living. If, however, to speak with more truth, it is not lawful for a Christian to take the life of a wife who commits adultery, but only to divorce her, who would be so insane as to say to him: "Do what you are not allowed to do, in order to be allowed to do what you are not allowed to do"? As both actions—either taking the life of an adulteress or marrying someone else while she is still alive—are forbidden by Christ's law, both have to be