Letters 49.2–49.13

Some people find fault with me because in the books I wrote against Jovinian I went too far, either in praising virgins or in disparaging married women; and they say that to preach chastity so highly that no comparison seems left between a wife and a virgin is, in a way, a condemnation of marriage. If I remember the point at issue correctly, the dispute between Jovinian and us is this: he makes marriage equal to virginity, we place it below; he says there is little or no difference, we say there is much. In the end he was condemned, with you acting after the Lord, precisely because he dared to compare marriage with perpetual chastity. Or, if a virgin and a married woman are thought to be the same thing, why could Rome not bear to hear the impiety of this saying: 'A virgin as regards a man, not a virgin as regards childbirth'? There can be no middle ground: either my view must be followed or Jovinian's. If I am blamed for placing marriage below virginity, let him be praised who puts them on a level; but if he who thought them equal has been condemned, let his condemnation be a testimony for my work. If men of the world are indignant at being on a lower rung than virgins, I am surprised that clerics and monks and the continent do not praise what they themselves do. They cut themselves off from their wives in order to imitate the chastity of virgins, and yet they want married men to be the very same as virgins? Let them either be joined again to the wives they renounced, or, if they keep apart, they will confess even by their silence that what they have preferred to the work of marriage is better. Or was I so unskilled in the Scriptures, reading the sacred volumes for the first time, that I could not keep to the line, the thin thread of speech, so to say, between virginity and marriage? No doubt I did not know the saying, 'Do not be overly righteous'; and while I shield one side, I have been wounded on the other; to speak more plainly, while I fight Jovinian at close quarters, Manichaeus has stabbed me in the back. Did I not, I ask, say this by way of preface at the very beginning of my work? 'We do not disparage marriage as followers of the doctrine of Marcion and Manichaeus; nor, deceived by the error of Tatian, the leader of the Encratites, do we think all intercourse unclean. He condemns and rejects not only marriage but also the foods that God created for use. We know that in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware, and that on the foundation of Christ, which Paul the architect laid, one builds gold, silver, precious stones, another on the contrary hay, wood, straw. We are not ignorant that marriage is honorable and the bed undefiled. We have read God's first sentence: "Increase and multiply and fill the earth." But we accept marriage in such a way as to prefer virginity, which is born of marriage. Will silver not be silver if gold is more precious than silver? Or is it an insult to the tree and the crop if fruit and grain are preferred to root and leaves, to stalk and ear? As fruit comes from the tree and wheat from the straw, so virginity comes from marriage. The hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold fruit, though born of one soil and one seed, still differ greatly in number. Thirty is referred to marriage; for the very joining of the fingers, as if embracing and pledging one another with a gentle kiss, pictures husband and wife. Sixty is referred to widows, because they are placed in straits and tribulation; hence they are pressed down by the finger above; and the greater the difficulty of abstaining from the allurements of pleasure once known, the greater the reward. Further, the number one hundred (I beg you, reader, pay close attention) passes from the left hand to the right, and with the same fingers, though not on the same hand, by which married women and widows are signified on the left, it makes a circle and expresses the crown of virginity.'

Does the man who says this, I ask you, condemn marriage? We called virginity gold and matrimony silver. We explained that the hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold fruit are produced from one soil and one seed, although they differ greatly in number. And will any reader be so unfair as to judge me not by my words but by his own opinion? Certainly we have been far more lenient toward marriage than almost all Latin and Greek commentators, who refer the hundredfold to martyrs, the sixtyfold to virgins, and the thirtyfold to widows; so that, on their view, married people are excluded from the good soil and from the seed of the householder. But perhaps I was cautious at the beginning and careless in the rest? After dividing up my little work, did I not, on coming to the questions, immediately add: 'I ask you, virgins and the continent of both sexes, and husbands too, and those married twice, to help my efforts with your prayers'? Jovinian is the common enemy of all. Can I condemn with the error of Manichaeus those whose prayers I need and whom I entreat as helpers of my work?

Let us hurry on to the rest, for the brevity of a letter does not allow us to linger longer on each point. Explaining the apostle's testimony, '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,' we added this: 'This whole question concerns those who are in marriage, whether they may put away their wives, which the Lord also forbade in the Gospel. Hence the apostle too says: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." But since one who has once taken a wife cannot abstain except by consent, nor give a bill of divorce to one who has not sinned, let him render his wife her due, because he bound himself of his own accord so as to be obliged to render it.' Can the man who says that it is the Lord's command that wives not be put away, and that without consent man does not separate what God has joined, be said to condemn marriage? Again, in what follows: 'But each,' he says, 'has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.' Explaining this sentence we added: 'What I want, he says, is plain. But since there are different gifts in the church, I concede marriage too, so as not to seem to condemn nature. And consider at the same time that the gift of virginity is one thing, the gift of marriage another. For if the reward of the married and of virgins were the same, he would never have said after the counsel of continence: "But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another." Where each has its own character, there is difference on both sides. I grant that marriage too is a gift of God, but between gift and gift there is great difference.' Indeed the apostle too, about the same man who repented after incest, says: 'On the contrary, forgive him and comfort him,' and: 'If you have forgiven anyone anything, I have too.' And so that we should not think a man's gift to be despised, he added: 'For what I have forgiven, if I have forgiven anything, has been for your sake in the presence of Christ.' The gifts of Christ are diverse. Hence Joseph too, as a type of him, had a many-colored coat; and in the forty-fourth psalm, 'The queen stood at his right hand in gilded clothing, arrayed in variety.' And the apostle Peter says, 'as fellow heirs of manifold grace,' which is said more expressively in Greek as ποικίλης, that is, 'varied.'

I ask: what is this contentiousness, to shut one's eyes and not see the plainest light? We said that there are different gifts in the church, and that the gift of virginity is one thing and the gift of marriage another. And shortly after: 'I grant that marriage too is a gift of God, but between gift and gift there is great difference.' And are we said to condemn what we proclaim in the plainest words to be a gift of God? Further, if Joseph is taken as a type of the Lord, his many-colored and variegated coat consists of virgins, widows, the continent, and the married; and can anyone who belongs to the coat of Christ seem an outsider, when we said that the queen herself, that is, the church of the Savior, is arrayed in gilded clothing with the same variety? And later, too, when discussing marriage we followed the same sense: 'This passage does not bear on the present controversy. For he teaches, in line with the Lord's saying, that a wife must not be put away except for the cause of sexual immorality, and that one who has been put away must not marry another while her husband is living, or at least must be reconciled to her husband.' And also in another place: 'A wife is bound for as long as her husband lives; but if her husband falls asleep, she is free; let her marry whom she will, only in the Lord,' that is, to a Christian. He who concedes second and third marriages in the Lord forbids even a first one with a pagan.

Let my detractors open their ears, I beg, and see that I have conceded second and third marriages in the Lord. Could I, who did not condemn second and third marriages, condemn a first marriage? In the place too where we interpret the apostle's text, 'Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not bring back his foreskin. Was he called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised' (although some very learned interpreters of Scripture contend that this was said of circumcision and slavery), did we not plainly uphold the covenant of marriage? We said: 'If anyone was called in uncircumcision, let him not be circumcised. You had a wife, he says, when you believed; do not think faith in Christ a reason for separation, for God has called us in peace. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God. For celibacy and marriage profit nothing without works, since even faith, which belongs properly to Christians, is said to be dead if it has no works; and on this basis even the virgins of Vesta and the once-married women of Juno could be counted in the ranks of the saints.' And a little later: 'Were you called as a slave? Do not let it trouble you; but even if you can become free, rather make use of it. Even if you have a wife, he says, and are bound to her, and pay the debt, and do not have authority over your own body, and (to speak more plainly) are your wife's slave, do not be sad on this account or sigh over your lost virginity. And even if you can find some grounds for separation, so as to enjoy the freedom of chastity, do not seek your own salvation through another's ruin. Keep your wife for a while and do not run ahead of one who lingers: wait until she follows. If you act patiently, your wife will be changed into a sister.'

In the passage too where we discussed why the apostle said, 'Concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord; but I give counsel, as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord to be faithful,' we exalted virginity in such a way as to keep the rank of marriage: 'If the Lord had commanded virginity, he would have seemed to condemn marriage and to take away the seedbed of humankind, from which virginity itself is born. If he had cut off the root, how could he look for crops? If he had not first laid the foundations, how could he raise the building and put on the roof that is to cover everything from above?' If we called marriage the root and virginity the crop, marriage the foundation and perpetual chastity the building or roof, will any detractor of mine be so jealous or so blind as to see the building and the roof in the same house and not notice the foundation that carries the building and roof? Further, in another place, setting out the apostle's testimony in which he says, 'Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife,' we at once added this: 'Each of us has his own limits; give me mine and keep yours. If you are bound to a wife, do not give her a bill of divorce; if I am loosed from a wife, I will not seek a wife. As I do not loose marriages once they are bound, so you should not bind what is loosed.' And in another testimony what we thought about virginity and marriage is declared most plainly: 'The apostle does not put a snare on us or force us to be what we do not wish; but he urges what is honorable and seemly, and makes us serve the Lord intently, always be careful, and wait ready for the Lord's will, so that when he commands anything, we may at once fulfil the command like a vigorous and armed soldier, and do it without any of the distraction which, according to Ecclesiastes, has been given to the men of this world to be distracted by.' At the end of the comparison of the married and virgins, too, we concluded our discussion with this sentence: 'Where there is good and better, the reward of the good and of the better is not one; and where the reward is not one, the gifts are certainly different. So there is as much difference between marriage and virginity as between not sinning and doing good, or rather, to put it more mildly, as between good and better.'

Further on, when we say: 'Having finished the discussion of marriage and virginity, and with a careful balance of precepts between the two, so as to turn neither to the left nor to the right, but to walk on the king's highway and fulfil the saying, "Do not be overly righteous," he again compares monogamy with digamy, and, as he had placed marriage below virginity, so he places digamy below marriage,' did we not show plainly what the left and the right are in holy Scripture, and what 'Do not be overly righteous' means? The left, namely, is if we follow the lust of Jews and Gentiles and are always burning for intercourse; the right, if we follow the error of the Manichaeans and are entangled in the nets of a feigned chastity; but the king's highway is to aspire to virginity in such a way that marriage is not condemned. Besides, who will be so unfair a judge of my little works as to say that I condemn first marriages, when he has read what I said even of second marriages? 'The apostle concedes second marriages, but to those who wish, to those women who cannot contain themselves, lest, having grown wanton against Christ, they wish to marry, incurring condemnation for having made void their first faith; and he concedes this because many have turned back after Satan. Still, they will be more blessed if they remain as they are. And at once he adds his apostolic authority: "according to my counsel." Further, so that the apostle's authority should not seem too light, he added: "And I think that I too have the Spirit of God." Where he calls to continence, the counsel is not a man's but the Spirit of God's; but where he grants leave to marry, he does not name the Spirit of God but weighs the counsel of prudence, relaxing things for each as each can bear.' After setting out the testimonies in which the apostle concedes second marriages, we immediately added: 'Just as, because of the danger of sexual immorality, he concedes marriage to virgins and makes excusable what is not sought for its own sake, so the same sexual immorality concedes second marriages to widows. For it is better, even if a second and third, to know one man than many; that is, it is more tolerable for a woman to have prostituted herself to one man than to many.' Away with slander! Here we were discussing second, third, and, if you like, fourth marriage, not the first; let no one refer what we said, 'to have prostituted herself to one man than to many,' to the first husband, when our whole question was about digamy and trigamy. Finally we sealed the discussion of digamy and trigamy with this conclusion: 'All things are lawful, but not all things are expedient. I do not condemn the twice married, nor even the thrice married, nor, if the word can be used, the eight-times married. I will go further: I receive even a fornicator who repents. Whatever is equally lawful must be weighed in an equal balance.'

Let my slanderer blush for saying that I condemn first marriages, when he reads: 'I do not condemn the twice married, nor even the thrice married, nor, if the word can be used, the eight-times married.' It is one thing not to condemn, another to preach; one thing to grant indulgence, another to praise virtue. And if I seem harsh in having said, 'Whatever is equally lawful must be weighed in an equal balance,' I think that he will not judge me cruel and rigid who reads that different places are prepared for virginity and marriage and different ones for the thrice married, the eight-times married, and the penitent. That Christ was a virgin in the flesh and monogamous in the spirit, because he has one church, is attested elsewhere in what I said; and we are believed to condemn marriage! Am I said to condemn marriage, I who wrote this: 'No one doubts that the priests were descended from the stock of Aaron, Eleazar, and Phinehas; and since they too had wives, they would rightly be set against us if, with the error of the Encratites, we maintained that marriages are to be rejected'? Do we rebuke Tatian, the leader of the Encratites, who rejects marriage, and ourselves condemn marriage? Again, where I compare virgins and widows, what I thought about marriage, and how I made three grades, of virginity, of widowhood and continence, and of marriage, is declared by what is written: 'I do not deny that widows are blessed who have remained so after baptism, nor do I detract from the merit of those who persevere in chastity with their husbands; but just as these have a greater reward with God than married women serving the duty of marriage, so let them too bear with equanimity that virginity is preferred to them.'

Setting out also the apostle's testimony to the Galatians, 'By the works of the law no flesh will be justified,' we added this sense: 'Marriage too is among the works of the law; hence those who have no children are cursed under it. If marriage is also granted in the Gospel, it is one thing to grant indulgence to weakness, another to promise rewards to virtues.' See, we said plainly that marriage is granted in the Gospel, but that those who remain in its duty cannot receive the rewards of chastity. If husbands take this ill, let them not be angry with me but with the holy Scriptures, or rather with the bishops, presbyters, and deacons and the whole priestly and Levitical choir, who know that they cannot offer sacrifices if they are serving the work of marriage. And also in the place where we set out the testimony from the Apocalypse, is it not clear what we thought about virgins, widows, and the married? 'These are those who sing the new song, which no one can sing except one who is a virgin. These are the firstfruits of God and of the Lamb, and without spot. If virgins are the firstfruits of God, then widows and those continent in marriage will come after the firstfruits, that is, in the second and third grade.' We place widows and married women in the second and third grade, and are we said to condemn marriage with heretical frenzy?

There are many things we said throughout the book about virginity, widows, and marriage with careful balance. But for the sake of brevity I will set down just one more testimony, which I think no one will contradict except someone who wants to prove himself either an enemy or a madman. When I had put forward that the Lord went to a wedding in Cana of Galilee, after some remarks I added this as well: 'He who went to a wedding once taught that one should marry once. And it could harm virginity if we did not place marriage after virginity and after the chastity of widowhood, in the third grade; but as it is, since it belongs to heretics to condemn marriage and to spurn God's ordinance, whatever is said in praise of marriage we gladly hear. For the church does not condemn marriages but subordinates them; it does not reject them but orders them, knowing, as we said above, that in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and silver but also of wood and earthenware, some for honor and some for dishonor, and that whoever cleanses himself will be a vessel for honor, useful, prepared for every good work.' 'Whatever,' I say, 'is said in praise of marriage we gladly hear.' We gladly hear marriage praised, and do we condemn marriage? The church does not condemn marriages but subordinates them (whether you like it or not, husbands, it subordinates them) to virginity and widowhood. The church subordinates marriage, marriage that remains in its own work, but does not condemn it; it does not reject it but orders it. It is in your power, if you wish, to climb to the second grade of chastity. Why are you indignant if, standing in the third, you do not want to hasten to higher things?

Since, then, I have warned the reader so many times and so often, and have walked like a cautious traveller through nearly every thousand lines of my treatise, saying that I accept marriage in such a way as to prefer to it the continent, widows, and virgins, a prudent and kind reader ought to have judged even what seemed harsh in the light of the rest, and not accused me of putting forward contradictory opinions in one and the same book. For who is so dull and so unskilled in writing as to condemn and praise the same thing, to pull down what he has built and build what he has pulled down, and, after defeating his opponent, to be struck at last by his own sword? If country people ignorant of rhetoric or dialectic disparaged me, I would pardon their lack of skill and not blame the accusation, since I would see ignorance at fault, not ill will. But as it is, since eloquent men trained in liberal studies prefer to wound rather than to understand, let them have a short answer from me: they ought to correct faults, not find fault. The field lies open, the battle line stands opposite, the opponent's doctrine is plain, and (to bring in something from Virgil) 'look at him opposite, who calls you out': let them answer him differently, keep measure in debate, and teach me in their own books what I have either left out or added. I do not listen to fault-finders; I follow teachers. It is a dainty sort of teaching to dictate blows from the wall to a man who is fighting, and, while you yourself are smeared with perfumes, to accuse a bloodied soldier of cowardice. Nor in saying this am I at once guilty of boasting, as if I alone had fought while the rest slept; I say only that those who have seen me wounded can fight more cautiously. I do not want the kind of contest in which you only protect yourself and, with your right hand idle, carry your shield round with your left. You must either strike or fall. I cannot count you a victor unless I see your opponent slain.

We read in the schools, most learned men, and learned together those writings of Aristotle, and those that flow from the springs of Gorgias, namely that there are several kinds of speaking, and among them that it is one thing to write gymnastically, as an exercise, another to write dogmatically. In the first, the discussion ranges freely, and in answering an opponent one puts forward now this, now that, argues as one pleases, says one thing and does another, shows bread, as the saying is, and holds a stone; in the second, an open face and, so to say, candor are needed. It is one thing to inquire, another to define: in the one we must fight, in the other teach. You, as an eager schoolmaster, teach me while I stand in battle and am in danger of my life: 'Do not strike a wound obliquely, from where you are not expected; strike with a straight sword. It is shameful for you that an enemy should perish by tricks and not by strength'; as if it were not the highest art of fighters to threaten in one place and strike in another. Read Demosthenes, I beg you, read Tully; and in case you dislike rhetoricians, whose art is to say what is probable rather than what is true, read Plato, Theophrastus, Xenophon, Aristotle, and the rest who, flowing from the spring of Socrates, ran in separate streams: what in them is open, what simple? What words are not full of meaning? What meanings do not aim at victory? Origen, Methodius, Eusebius, and Apollinaris write many thousands of lines against Celsus and Porphyry: consider with what arguments and how slippery ones they overturn the problems woven by the spirit of the devil, and how, because they are sometimes compelled to say not what they think but what is necessary, … the pagans. I say nothing of the Latin writers, Tertullian, Cyprian, Minucius, Victorinus, Lactantius, and Hilary, lest I seem not so much to defend myself as to accuse others. I will bring forward the apostle Paul, whom, whenever I read him, I seem to hear not words but thunder. Read his letters, especially to the Romans, the Galatians, and the Ephesians, in which he is wholly engaged in combat, and you will see in the testimonies he takes from the Old Testament how skilful, how prudent, how well he conceals what he is about. His words seem simple, as of an innocent and rustic man who knows neither how to lay traps nor how to avoid them; but wherever you look, they are thunderbolts. He sticks to his case, seizes all that he touches; he turns his back in order to win; he feigns flight in order to kill. Let us then slander him and say to him: 'The testimonies you used against the Jews or the other heresies sound one way in their own places and another in your letters. We see captive examples: they served you to victory, though in their own books they do not fight.' Does he not say to us with the Savior: 'We speak one way outside, another at home'? The crowd hears parables, the disciples the truth. The Lord puts questions to the Pharisees and does not explain them. It is one thing to teach a disciple, another to defeat an opponent. 'My secret,' he says, 'is for me; my secret is for me and for mine.'