unmarried, thinketh of the things of the Lord, Peter aiso describes by giving commandment.
ON THE GOOD OF MARRIAGE. 495 the due of the flesh: this is the work of marriage, this the Apostle defends from every charge, in saying, '' Both if thou shalt have taken a wife, thou hast not sinned: and if a virgin shall have been married, she sinneth unmarried and married; as she deserves the excess of hatred, who containing from marriage,' that is, from a thing allowed, does not contain from offenses, either of luxury, or pride, or curiosity and prating; so the married woman is seldom met with, who, in the very obedience of married life, hath no thought save how to please God, by adorning herself, not with plaited hair, or gold and pearls and costly attire,° but as becometh women making profession of piety, through a good conversation. Such marriages, forsooth, the Apostle Peter aiso describes by giving commandment. 'In like manner,'' saith he, '' wives obeying their own husbands; in order that, even if any obey not the word, they may be gained without discourse through the conversation of the wives, seeing your fear and chaste conversation: that they be not they that are adorned without with crispings of hair, or clothed with gold or with fair raiment; but that hidden man of your heart, in that unbroken continuance of a quiet and modest spirit, which before the Lord also is rich. For thus certain holy women, who hoped in the Lord, used to adorn themselves, obeying their own husbands: as Sarah obeyed Abraham, calling him Lord: whose daughters ye are become, when ye do well, and fear not with any vain fear. Husbands in like manner living at peace and in chastity with your wives, both give ye honor as to the weaker and subject vessel, as with co-heirs of grace, and see that your prayers be not hindered.''" Is it indeed that such marriages have no thought of the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord? But they are very rare: who denies this? And, being, as they are, rare, nearly all the persons who are such, were not joined together in order to be such, but being already joined together became such, not: and, ''Let her do what she will: she sinneth not if she be married."* But an advance beyond moderation in demanding the due of either sex, for the reasons which I have stated above, is allowed to married persons as matter of pardon.
13. What therefore he says, *' She, that is unmarried, thinketh of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit; " we are not to take in such sense, as to think that a chaste Christian wife is not holy in body. Forsooth unto all the faithful it was said, '' Know ye not that your bodies are a temple of the Holy Ghost within you, Whom ye have from God?"? Therefore the bodies also of the married are holy, so long as they keep faith to one another and to God. And that this sanctity of either of them, even an unbelieving partner does not stand in the way of, but rather that the sanctity of the wife profits the unbelieving husband, and the sanctity of the husband profits the unbelieving wife, the same Apostle is witness, saying,
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in a brother."3 Wherefore that was said according to the greater sanctity of the unmarried than of the married, unto which there is also due a greater reward, according as, the one being a good, the other is a greater good: inasmuch as also she has this thought only, how to please the Lord. For it is not that a female who believes, keeping married chastity, thinks not how to please the Lord; but assuredly less so, in that she thinks of the things of the world, how to please her husband. For this is what he would say of them, that they may, in a certain way, find themselves obliged by marriage to think of the things of the world, how to please their husbands.
15. For what Christian men of our time being free from the marriage bond, having power to contain from all sexual intercourse, seeing it to be now "'a time," as it is written, 'not of embracing, but of abstaining from embrace,'' ® would not choose rather to keep virginal or widowed continence, than (now that there is no obligation from duty to human society) to endure tribulation of the flesh, without which marriages cannot be (to pass over in silence other things from which the Apostle spares.) But when through desire reigning they shall have been joined together, if they shall after overcome it, because it is not lawful to loose, in such wise as it was lawful not to tie, the marriage bond, they be-
14. And not without just cause a doubt is raised, whether he said this of all married women, or of such as so many are, as that nearly all may be thought so to be. For neither doth that, which he saith of unmarried women, '' She, that is unmarried, thinkest of the things of the Lord, to be holy both in body and spirit:''4 pertain unto all unmarried women: whereas there are certain widows who are dead, who live in delights. However, so far as regards a certain distinction and, as it were, character of their own, of the
Ox Tim, 1i.,.9, 10%
8 Eccles, iii..5. Syteelina avalos Wet beter. .2=7,
2 x Cor. vi. 19. 1 x Cor. vii. 28, 36. 1, 41 Cor. vii. 34. 3 x Cor, vii. 14.