Because of Fornication Let Each Man Have His Own Wife (on 1 Cor 7:2) 5

Do you wish to learn exactly how terrible this is? Consider what kind of life those lead who suspect their own wives: how unpleasant their food, how unpleasant their drink. The table seems to them full of deadly poisons, and they flee the house as though it were destruction, full of countless evils. They have no sleep, no gentle night, no company of friends, not even the rays of the sun themselves; they think they are troubled even by the light itself, not only when they see their wife committing adultery, but even if they merely suspect it. Consider that your wife too suffers this when she hears from someone …, if she suspects that you have given yourself to a prostitute. Reasoning on this, flee not only adulteries but also suspicions; and if she suspects you unjustly, [comfort her] and persuade her. For she does this not from enmity or arrogance, but from care and from great fear for her own possession. For your body, as I said before, is her possession, and a possession more precious than all that exists. Do not, then, wrong her in the greatest matters, nor give her a mortal blow. Even if you despise her, at least fear God, the avenger of such things, who has threatened unbearable punishments for such sins. For of those who dare such things he says, “Their worm will not die, and the fire will not be quenched.” But if the future does not much sting you, at least let the present frighten you. Many, at any rate, of those who attach themselves to prostitutes have perished miserably even here, the wretches, having suffered sorceries from the women with whom they committed sexual immorality. For these women, striving to detach him from the wife who lives with him and was pledged to him and to bind him wholly to their own love, set magic in motion, prepared love potions and stitched together many charms; then, throwing him in this way into grievous illness, handing him over to decay and long wasting and surrounding him with countless evils, they carried him off from the present life. If you do not fear Gehenna, man, fear their sorceries. For when through this licentiousness you make yourself bereft of God's alliance and strip yourself of help from above, the prostitute takes hold of you freely, calls her demons, stitches together the leaves, works her plots, and with great ease overcomes your salvation, making you a reproach and a laughing-stock to all who live in the city, so that you are not even pitied when you suffer evils. “For who will pity a charmer bitten by a snake,” he says, “and all who approach wild beasts?” I pass over the loss of money, the daily suspicions, the conceit, the arrogance, the insolence that prostitutes inflict on the foolish, which are more bitter than countless deaths. Your wife, who often did not even say a harsh word, you could not bear; but the prostitute, even when she slaps you, you worship. And are you not ashamed, do you not blush, do you not pray that the earth may open for you? How will you be able to enter the church and stretch out your hands to heaven? With what mouth will you call on God, the mouth with which you kissed the prostitute? And are you not afraid, do you not shudder, tell me, lest a thunderbolt brought down from above burn up your shameless head? For even if you escape the notice of the wife who has been wronged, you will never escape the sleepless eye; for to that adulterer who said, “Darkness is around me, and walls; what do I fear?” that wise man answered: … so much brighter, looking upon the works of men. That is why Paul said all this: “Let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband; let the husband render to the wife the due … to the husband.” “Honey drips from the lips of a prostitute, which for a season pleases your throat,” … and “sharpened more than a two-edged sword.” The prostitute's kiss has poison, a poison hidden and concealed. Why, then, do you pursue a pleasure that brings condemnation, gives birth to destruction, inflicts an incurable wound, when it is possible to be glad and suffer nothing terrible? For with the free woman there are together pleasure, safety, ease, honour, adornment and a good conscience; but there, much bitterness, much harm, perpetual accusation. For even if no human being sees, your conscience will never cease accusing you; but wherever you go, this accuser will follow, accusing and crying out loudly. So if anyone pursues pleasure, let him above all flee intercourse with prostitutes. For nothing is more bitter than that intimacy, nothing more unpleasant than that intercourse, nothing fouler than their ways. “Let the hind of [your] love and the foal of your graces keep company with you; let the spring of your water be your own.” Having a pure spring of water, why do you run to a pit of filth? … what defence will you have? What pardon? For if those who give themselves to sexual immorality before marriage are punished and pay the penalty, like that man clothed in filthy garments, much more those after marriage. For here the charge becomes double and triple: because, though they enjoyed consolation, they bolted off into that licentiousness, and because the act is reckoned not only sexual immorality but also adultery, which is worse than every sin. Let us continue, then, chanting these things to ourselves and to our wives; and that is why I too will end with these words: “But because of sexual immorality let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband; let the husband render to the wife the goodwill that is due, and likewise also the wife to the husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife.” Keeping these words with exactness, in the marketplace and at home, by day and in the evening, at table and in bed, and everywhere, let us both practise them ourselves and teach our wives both to say them to us and to hear them from us, so that, having lived the present life chastely, we may also obtain the kingdom of heaven, by the grace and love for humankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom and with whom be glory to the Father, together with the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen.