On the Good of Marriage 32–35

The good of marriage, then, among all nations and all people, lies in the purpose of begetting and in the faithfulness of chastity; but, as far as the people of God are concerned, also in the holiness of the sacrament, by which it is wrong for a woman, even one who departs with a certificate of divorce, to marry another while her husband lives, not even for the sake of bearing children. Though this is the only reason for which marriages are made, even when the thing for which they are made does not follow, the marriage bond is not loosed except by the death of a spouse. Just as, if the ordination of clergy takes place for gathering a congregation, even if the gathering of a congregation does not follow, the sacrament of ordination still remains in those ordained; and if anyone is removed from office for some fault, he will not lack the sacrament of the Lord once imposed, although it remains to his judgment. That marriages take place for the sake of begetting the apostle testifies thus: “I want the younger women to marry.” And as if someone had asked him, “For what?” he immediately added, “to bear children, to be mothers of families.” To the faithfulness of chastity belongs this: “The wife does not have power over her own body, but the husband; likewise the husband does not have power over his own body, but the wife.” To the holiness of the sacrament belongs this: “that the wife not depart from her husband; but if she departs, she is to remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband; and the husband is not to put away his wife.” These are all goods for which marriage is a good: offspring, faithfulness, sacrament. But not to seek carnal offspring any longer at this time, and so to keep a certain perpetual freedom from all such activity and to be spiritually subject to one husband, Christ, is certainly better and holier; provided that people use that freedom as it is written, so as to think of the things of the Lord, how they may please God; that is, that continence should think continually lest obedience have anything less. This virtue, as the root and, as people say, the mother, and plainly the general virtue, the holy fathers of old exercised in action, while they held that continence in the disposition of the soul; they would surely have practiced it through obedience, since they were righteous and holy and always ready for every good work, even if they had been commanded to abstain from all intercourse. For how much more easily could they refrain from intercourse at God's command or exhortation, who by obedience were able to sacrifice the offspring whose propagation alone they served by having intercourse!

This being so, a more than sufficient answer has been given to the heretics, whether Manichees or any others who slander the fathers of the Old Testament about their many wives, thinking this an argument by which to convict them of incontinence: provided they grasp that it is not a sin which is committed neither against nature, since they used those women not for wantonness but for begetting; nor against custom, since those things were commonly done in those times; nor against a command, since they were forbidden by no law. As for those who used women unlawfully, either the divine judgment rebukes them in those Scriptures, or the reading sets them before us to be judged and avoided, not approved and imitated.

But we warn our own people who have wives, as much as we can, not to dare to judge those holy fathers by their own weakness, “comparing themselves with themselves,” as the apostle says, and so not understanding how much strength a soul has that serves righteousness against lusts, so that it does not give way to carnal impulses of this kind or allow them to slip or advance into intercourse beyond the need of begetting, beyond what the order of nature, the custom of morals, and the decrees of the laws prescribe. People suspect this of those fathers because they themselves either chose marriage through incontinence or use their wives intemperately. But let the continent, whether men whose wives have died, or women whose husbands have died, or both who by mutual consent have vowed continence to God, know that a greater reward is indeed due to them than conjugal chastity requires; but let them not only not despise, in comparison with their own resolve, the marriages of the holy fathers, who were joined prophetically, who sought in intercourse nothing but offspring and in offspring nothing but what would profit Christ, who was to come in the flesh, but let them without hesitation even place those marriages before their own resolve.

Most of all we urge the boys and virgins who dedicate their very integrity to God to know that what they vow must be guarded with humility all the greater, the more it belongs to heaven, while they meanwhile live on earth. For it is written, “The greater you are, the more humble yourself in all things.” It is for us, then, to say something of their greatness; for them to think of great humility. Except, then, for certain of those married holy fathers and mothers, than whom these are not better, though they are not married, because if they were married they would not be their equals, let them not doubt that they surpass all the other married people of this time, or those who are continent after experiencing intercourse, not as much as Susanna is surpassed by Anna, but as much as both are surpassed by Mary. I speak of what concerns the holy integrity of the flesh itself; for who does not know what other merits Mary has? Let them therefore join to so great a resolve a way of life that befits it, so that they may have certain security of the surpassing reward, knowing well that to them and to all the faithful, the beloved and chosen members of Christ, many coming from east and west, though shining with a light of glory that differs among them according to their merits, this great thing is given in common, that they recline in the kingdom of God with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, who were husbands not for the sake of this world but for Christ's sake, fathers for Christ's sake. And with how much humility this must be guarded, I have shown, as well as I could, in a single volume.