On the Singleness of Clerics

I had indeed promised you some time ago, dearest sons, a letter which, commending the rules of all conduct from the Law, would contain in summary everything that applies generally to all clergy for directing the rule of discipline. But since some among you have now been commonly rolled into disgrace by living with women, I have been compelled by the Lord's rebuke to write to you specially on this matter too. He has commanded wretched me, because of your negligence, to give a fitting charge with severity: that clergy should not live with women. And although this admonition would be sufficient on the sole authority of my letter, yet lest anyone mock me as a dreamer, as his brothers mocked Joseph, we add the firmness of the Scriptures, so that all may know that the Lord commands in this way also through revelation what is known to have been commanded before in writing; and that we are not adulterating the word of the Lord, nor wishing boastfully to glory in revelations, but, reporting thus before the sight of the Lord, do not lie in what we say. For we trust that we have not heard a lie from the Lord, relying on the voice of the apostle Paul, who declares: “For we are not, as so many, adulterating the word of God; but as from sincerity, as from God, in the sight of God, we speak in Christ.” So, set in the greatest grief over certain wasted members of our body, and groaning at the loss of the lamenting church, which through our sloth is reduced day by day to excessive fewness, we believe we are relieved in some measure by this: that the negligence of certain people cannot prejudice our diligence, since our letters have never failed them, letters which during my absence have made up to all for my presence. Let each one who despises it write himself down as guilty of his own disregard; but we, with a free brow, cry out to the despisers what Solomon confidently reproaches: “Because I called,” he says, “and you did not obey; and I stretched out my words, and you did not attend, but made my counsels void and did not attend to my rebukes, therefore I too will laugh at your destruction. I will rejoice over you when ruin comes upon you, when sudden tumult comes upon you and overthrow like a storm, and when distress and siege come upon you. For it shall be that when you call upon me, I will not hear you. The wicked will seek me and not find me; for they hated wisdom. They did not take up the word of the Lord, nor were they willing to attend to my counsels; for they spurned my rebukes. Therefore they shall eat the fruits of their way and be filled with their own impiety.”

Our exhortation now turns to you, whom we do not wish to experience such headlong ruins. Fear as much as you can the destructions of such falls, and let the experiences of those slipping in this overthrow terrify us. He is too reckless who strives to pass on when he has seen another fall, and he is very unbridled who is struck with no fear when another perishes. But he is a lover of his own salvation who avoids running into another's death; and he is provident who becomes anxious at the disasters of others, as Solomon approves, saying: “The shrewd man, seeing evil punished, will be greatly instructed”; and again: “When the wicked fall, the righteous will be greatly afraid.” Confidence is an adversary which commits its life to dangers as if they were certain, and hope is slippery which hopes to be saved amid the kindlings of sin. Victory is uncertain when one fights amid hostile weapons, and deliverance is impossible when one is surrounded by flames and does not burn. Solomon denies this, saying: “Who will bind fire in his bosom and not burn his clothes? Or who will walk on coals of fire and not burn his feet? So is he who goes in to his neighbor's wife; he will not be unpunished, nor anyone who touches her.” Believe, I beg you, believe the divine faithfulness rather than your own, since nothing that it promises can deceive, for the Lord says: “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one stroke of the Law to fall.” And again: “Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.” We deceive ourselves, then, whenever we believe in a disordered way, thinking that through our faith the precepts of the Law can be changed, so that we hope that unshakable chastity can be kept everywhere between men and women.

One will hardly drink poison and live. Whoever sleeps on a riverbank must fear falling in, since the apostle says: “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.” In this matter it is better to fear well than to trust badly. And it is more useful for a man to know himself weak so that he may prove strong than to wish to seem strong and turn out weak. For this reason the apostle rebukes the presumptuous, saying: “If anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” Certainly a man is his own deceiver and cheats his own soul who, by not guarding against things contrary, has committed himself to harmful things. But he takes counsel more safely for himself who, always distrustful about evils, fears any harmful appearances. Solomon set out the difference between them, saying: “The wise man, by fearing, will turn away from all evil; but the fool, trusting in himself, mixes with the wicked.” A great counsel of divine wisdom has been found, by which we may be freed with the help of fear. A great economy of providence, that sometimes virtue and victory come through fear. Great remedies has the Lord bestowed for salvation, that even the timid may have praise, as Solomon repeats, saying: “Blessed is the man who reveres all things through fear.” Inestimable is the Lord's mercy, which has bestowed glory on his human creature from every side; and incomprehensible his goodness, which has given palms according to the kind of battles: so that by confidence we may overcome the savagery of men and by fear conquer the allurements of women, provided the Lord works glories over us both from strength and from weakness, so that in all and through all he may show himself almighty, distributing different kinds of triumphs, that wars may be won by us as much by counsel as by strength; and lest, if we conquered by the strength of faith alone, the works of wisdom should be empty, contrary to Solomon. Now, then, the arms of wisdom must be borne, where the female and male sexes declare war. So Solomon instructs, saying: “Make prudence known to you, that it may keep you from the strange and evil woman.” See now that in this war it is prudence, not faith, that has been given us as victor, prudence which would free us by the remedy of timidity; and consider what arms must now be taken up, if you wish to have the help of the Law. Be timid, so that you may be fearless; and although fear in combat seems weakness, yet according to the apostle's word, power is made perfect in weakness. Separate yourselves, I beg you, separate yourselves from the pestilential contagion.

The farther each one is from adversities, the less he feels adversities. He is less goaded by pleasures who is not where pleasures abound; and he suffers less from the troubles of greed who does not see riches, if we accept the apostle's assurance: “Those who wish to become rich fall into temptation and a snare and many useless and harmful desires, which plunge a man into ruin and destruction.” In just the same way he lies open to temptations who is joined to a woman, in whom there is nothing but what strikes the one who comes near. The female form has become the sting of sin, and the condition of death arose from nowhere else than from the substance of woman. Solomon recalls this for our caution, saying: “From a woman came the beginning of sin, and because of her we all die.” From that we are held mortal, and do we not fear? What if we were already immortal? Christ has indeed freed us through a woman, but we must still dread that from which we still die. Then deliverance itself will be established in the woman, if death, which had come through a woman, is overcome by us. But if scandals still rule around us through a woman, we have surely made a loss of Christ's deliverance; since that hope of freedom, which we believe Christ has bestowed on our faith, remains for the future, so that then a woman will not harm us at all, when death itself has been abolished. For if we now think ourselves untemptable by women's darts, then nothing remains for the heavenly kingdom. Not undeservedly the apostle rebukes such thoughts, saying: “Already you are filled, already you have become rich; without us you reign; and would that you did reign.” The time of wrestling, then, is still going on, and death through a woman still rages. I lie if we do not see from it the destruction of very many. How many and what great bishops and clergy, and laymen too, after the trampled contests of confessions and victories, after mighty deeds and signs and wonders shown everywhere, are known to have suffered shipwreck with all these, when they wished to sail in a fragile ship? How many lions has one delicate weakness tamed, which, though cheap and wretched, makes prey of the great? Solomon speaks of this, saying: “The price of a harlot is as much as one loaf; but a woman captures precious souls.”

These things are done before our eyes, and we are restrained by no terrors: what would we do if we heard of these deeds only as rumored histories? But this is always the unbelief of human hardness: not only by hearing but even by seeing it does not believe that others have perished, unless it sees itself perishing too. Nor is it shaken by the deaths of its companions, since it thinks they deserved it or were weak; but it confidently thinks itself of great merit or great strength, not knowing that examples are given to all when punishments are inflicted on some, as the Lord sets forth in the gospel, saying: “Do you think that these Galileans, who suffered such things, were sinners above all Galileans? No, I tell you; unless you repent, you will likewise perish, like those on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them. Do you think that they too were debtors above all people living in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; if you do not repent, you will likewise perish.”

We wonder that Adam was seduced through Eve, whom no examples of the dying had preceded, but only one command had bound, when now neither countless examples nor endless commands restrain us. To us it is fittingly said, after the pattern of the Lord's rebuke: “If Adam had seen the deaths that have been done among you, he would long ago have repented in sackcloth and ashes. But I tell you that it will be more tolerable for Adam on the day of judgment than for you.” Far, far away be this plague and pestilence and hidden ruin, the disordered nearness of a woman! It shoots darts, and its neighbor is the robbery of sins. In this companionship there is no approvable sincerity, since it has collisions as if from turbulent waves. In this familiarity no friendly concord dwells, since it creates nothing but discordant enmities. The Lord indeed made the woman a helper for the man, but by the serpent's envy she took on a hostile role. And if she who was born of her husband still tempts to this day the very man to whom she is joined, how much more she who is coupled to him bound by no law? And if those who are grown together as two in one flesh prick each other with mutual temptations, what do those do who were neither born nor joined in one flesh? Especially since he who is called away by love of another is no longer permitted to call upon God, nor allowed to think on divine things who has sought someone for whom to show domestic care. Therefore the apostle counsels thus, saying: “I want you to be free from anxiety. He who is without a wife is anxious how to please God; but he who has a wife thinks of the things of this world, how to please his wife.” What is there now to delight in this union, in which there are only battles? Or what usefulness favors it, where there are no conjugal duties, since even these cannot be secure? Everything that belongs to a woman is a cause of trouble, and union with her is always hostile. By her compact she causes great annoyances, and inflicts an incurable wound on the one to whom she has clung unlawfully. Sparks leap from coals, rust is bred from iron, asps hiss diseases, and a woman pours out the pestilence of desire, which Solomon compares thus, saying: “From garments comes the moth, and from a woman the iniquity of a man.” I want to know what this common affection is, what this disagreement of disease.

Always ambiguous, it troubles its own purpose by attacking it with wavering counsels. Why has he taken a woman to himself who scorned to marry a wife? Why does everyone who will not eat meat fill his dwelling with provisions of meat? And why does he who will not drink wine take his delight in wine? As if the mind were not often fed by having, without tasting, an abundance of food, and as if the mind were not more often aroused by the mere fragrance of scented wine. Why, through hypocrisy, does he wish to be called abstinent by people while in secret he is swollen with meat and drunkenness? Many have riches which they deny to their own use but keep out of desire; if no desire had clung to them, they would not possess the emblems of desire. But because they are possessed by desire, they enjoy in mind what they do not touch in use. So he who has despised the bond of marriage is bound by female bonds in another way: though he is joined in no intercourse, yet he always takes delight in desire, in sight, in conversation, in companionship. For if he had no desire for a woman, he would never take a woman for his delights. Indeed, he has given me a more suspicious resolve still, who took one who was not lawful and refused one who was lawful: unless I am mistaken, he has contrived in public to promise holiness to people and in secret not to be without a wife. Two proofs, of lust and of holiness, are to be wondered at on either side, each covering the other and each betraying the other. The ingenious eunuch and adulterer begrudges himself while he takes counsel for himself, and while he seeks both. He has done neither, so that he is by no means counted holy, who does not enjoy a true union, since the apostle Paul says: “Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be loosed. Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife.” But I grant that the modesty of this chastity has not been violated; yet he gives a bad reputation to the suspicious, and in vain guards within, by a laborious struggle, the good of modesty, which outwardly he causes to be defamed, destroying the teaching of the apostle Paul, who both foresees and warns: “Why,” he says, “is my liberty judged by an unbelieving conscience? If I partake with thanks, why am I blamed for that for which I give thanks?” It is worse than adultery to make continence criminal and holiness infamous. He brings blasphemy on the religion he has practiced who does not fulfill before all what he professes, so that Christianity is believed to be a deception and adultery seems to be clothed with the veil of holiness. For this reason the Lord forewarns in the gospel, saying: “So let your light shine before men, that seeing your good works they may magnify your Father who is in heaven.” The apostle Paul follows this, saying: “Let not your good, then, be blasphemed.” And again: “providing what is good not only before God but also before men.” And in another place: “Whether, then, you eat or drink or do anything, do all to the glory of God, and be without offense to Jews and Greeks and to the church of God, as I too please all in all things.”

But perhaps the objection is raised: what of his saying elsewhere, “If I wished to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ”? The sayings of the Law never exclude one another, but each answer is fixed to its own place. There it is not permitted to please men, where the will of men does not accept the will of the Lord; but where men accept what advances God's glory, the apostle Paul himself commanded that it be made known to all. “Let each of us,” he says, “please his neighbor for good edification.” How far, then, does he expect the reward of holiness who not only provokes blasphemy of holiness from unbelievers but also offers a ruinous example to the faithful? So that the weak, under the pretext of love, commit sexual immorality subtly, and the chaste man offers a lesson in a most unchaste chastity, destroying what the apostle Paul threatens: “Has the weak brother perished by your knowledge, for whom Christ suffered? Thus, sinning against the brothers and striking their weak conscience, you sin against Christ.” And indeed it befits not only the young but the old as well to take care for the weakness of the brothers, lest old age, from which all salutary lessons should proceed, provoke the young to perish; as Eleazar in the book of Maccabees declares, saying, “to be sent ahead to the underworld.” “For it is not worthy of our age to pretend, so that many of the young, thinking that Eleazar at ninety years has gone over to the life of foreigners, should themselves be led astray through me, because of my pretense and for a short and perishable time of life, and I should bring hatred and stain on my old age.” He preferred to expose his life to tortures rather than become a teacher of ruin to anyone; and we, where there are no tortures, are unwilling to put the brothers who are to be saved before our mere indulgences, and are not content to benefit ourselves as well as others without any tortures, when he would not live, being about to die, as he went on below, saying: “Therefore, departing life bravely, I will appear worthy of my old age, and I will leave to the young a brave example, that with ready mind and courage they may depart by an honorable death for the grave and holy laws.” While this befits laymen too, so that they do not put before outsiders occasions for blasphemy or before the brotherhood an opportunity for sexual immorality, this necessity binds clergy most of all, on whom either religion blasphemed or the brotherhood ruined will bring a double penalty. Nor will those find any comfort at all in the Lord's judgment who have supplied tinder for sin to outsiders and brothers. For this reason the apostle Paul instructs Titus thus: “showing yourself an example of good works in teaching, in integrity, in gravity, in sound and blameless speech, so that the adversary may be put to shame, having nothing evil to say of us.” And again: “Show all good faith, so that they may adorn the good teaching of our Savior the Lord in all things.” So too he writes to Timothy: “Be an example to the faithful in speech, in conduct, in love, in faith, in chastity.” And the apostle Peter also satisfies this, saying: “Let your conduct among the Gentiles be good, so that in that in which they speak against you as evildoers, they may glorify the Lord for your good works.” And again: “For such is the will of God, that by doing good you may silence the ignorance of foolish men.”

Nor let anyone put it to himself and say: “I want to have something to conquer.” For that is to say: “I desire to live under ruin.” Who is so foolish as to wish to be pressed into labor when he is offered a more comfortable triumph? For it is not a double triumph to be proved victor in the presence of a woman rather than to keep intact the pledge of holiness in living alone. And since there is one title of glory, in this case he is vainly brave who labors much and is rewarded equally with him who has conquered with little labor. What of the fact that he is rather written down as perfect who shows himself cut off on every side from female affections? For the Lord in the gospel calls him perfect who has cut away his whole patrimony from his own uses. Certainly, too, to anyone living alone daily triumphs for chastity are not lacking, since the human body never ceases to harass the spirit with carnal desires, as the apostle affirms, saying: “The flesh desires against the spirit and the spirit against the flesh; for these are opposed to each other, so that you do not do whatever you wish.” You now have your own flesh to overcome always: why do you also want to hire another? No one wants to add a worse fever on top of one fever, lest he begin to suffer from an incurable semi-tertian, which no physician can relieve. Nor does anyone take up another's burden on top of his own, lest, weighed down by two burdens, he be sunk to the underworld. So the prophet Jeremiah teaches that the weight of holiness must be borne alone: “It is good,” he says, “for a man when he has carried a heavy yoke in his youth; he will sit alone and be silent, because he has taken a heavy yoke upon himself.”

But let some malicious follower flee to the saying of the apostle Paul: “Bear one another's burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ.” These are not the burdens which the apostle Paul commands to be carried; rather, that no discord should divide us as we bear with one another, and that we should offer mutual help to brothers set in temptations; not that we should procure temptations for ourselves through women, but rather that we should lighten the weights of temptations, since he knows what the yoke of holiness is, which is borne alone with difficulty. Concerning it not only he but the Lord too was unwilling to lay down a fixed command, saying: “Not all receive this saying, but those to whom it has been given.” And again: “Let him who can receive it, receive it.” If, then, the greatness of this weight is borne with difficulty by one alone, how will it be borne if it is weighed down with doubled weights? And if almost all who live alone barely endure carnal snares, what do those do who do not hesitate to fall on swords hanging over them from both sides? I say more. If husbands and wives, who daily satisfy conjugal desires, are not enough for themselves, what are they to do who are associated with women to increase the attacks, when even a woman's glance, met unexpectedly or in passing for a moment, shoots as it were arrows into another's eyes? When simple reverence is not free, what goes on where a woman takes on the boldness of liberty in sharing a dwelling? When in household tasks she now bares her arms and thighs in woolwork, now, being hot, uncovers her limbs, now tired tosses herself about, or sometimes dissolves in laughter, now shows caresses, and, what is more poisonous than all, delights to play the harp or sing? It is more tolerable to hear the hissing of a basilisk than her singing. Against her Solomon makes us cautious, saying: “Do not be constantly with a dancing girl, nor listen to her, lest you perish by her power.” I pass over the rest, which is more shameful to say than to speak of; this alone I say: to see a woman broken in grief or anger is already not without allurement. What shall we say if you see her merry or, what is worse, caressing? Let me say it once: every unfitting companionship of women is the glue of sins and the poisoned birdlime with which the devil goes fowling. The society of women is unsuitable, whose companionship Solomon again teaches us to guard against in every way: “Do not sit at all with a strange woman,” he says, “and do not dispute with her over wine, lest your heart turn toward her and you slip in your blood into destruction.”

Finally, if we trust that our own mind will always persevere in this shared life, at least this ought to be suspect to us: that the women who live with us may perhaps be moved toward us, or, because of their hasty age, be goaded by frenzied incitements to other loves; and it will be a cause for us, which is worse, that another's sexual immorality should stain us without cause, since with us an occasion for the brothel is suggested to others, and we shall be swallowed up in the crime of another's guilt, for which we ourselves suborn the procuring of impurity. For this reason the apostle Paul instructs us thus about similar things: “If your brother is offended because of food, you are no longer walking in love. Do not by your food destroy him for whom Christ died.” And again: “It is good not to eat meat or drink wine or anything by which your brother stumbles or is offended or weakened.” And in another place: “Rather judge this, not to put a stumbling block or occasion of offense before a brother.” And of himself he says: “Therefore, if food offends my brother, I will never eat meat, lest I offend my brother.” So, since the detestable trouble of this union strikes us, even if it cannot make us adulterers, it makes us procurers for adulterers and the incestuous. For who, searching another's heart, could weigh the quality of each one, and presume to fight against Satan on behalf of another person, and to be a fit surety before God? He is mad who promises anything about himself, not to say if he is seen to give a pledge for a woman too, since the apostle Paul declares of himself thus: “Not that I have already received, or am already justified, or already perfect; but I follow on, if I may lay hold of that for which I also have been laid hold of by Christ. Brothers, I do not consider that I have yet laid hold of it; but one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and stretching forward to what lies ahead, I follow by the rule toward the prize of the upward call of our Lord Jesus Christ. As many of us, then, as are perfect, let us think this.” And again: “To me it is a very small thing to be judged by you or by any human day; I do not even judge myself. He who judges me is the Lord.” And in another place: “Blessed is he who does not judge himself in what he approves.” Although, then, we have nothing certain about our own steadfastness, we who are ceaselessly shaken among the waves of the world, bearing its stormy onsets, yet if anyone has such confidence in the immovability of his own firmness, let him at least anxiously dread being a stumbling block in others' sight, and be terrified at the voice of the Lord threatening: “Woe to this world because of offenses; but woe to that man through whom the offense comes.” If we fear and revere these threats of the Lord with a religious heart, let us fear our danger more from others than from ourselves, who are bound by the apostle Paul to mutual benefits: “not each considering his own things,” he says, “but those of others.” And again: “Let no one seek his own, but what is another's.”

But someone seizes on something from Paul himself to object: “Each of us,” he says, “will give account of himself to God, and each will carry his own load.” He, then, who does not wish to give account for another ought not to take part unlawfully in his affairs or business; and he who tries to be free and exempt from others' loads should, by the opposite rule, keep nothing of another's in his charge. For he who has handled another's business must be subject to the other's account. He must be bound by the loss or damage of the loads with whom a brother's loads perished under unsafe custody; for whatever in our house has been under too little protection, or thieves have broken into, is ours, and whatever has been badly done through our sloth is required of us. Then indeed we are free of one another, when nothing of another's is kept with us.

Perhaps someone will say: “Then we should not even gather together in the house of prayer, lest anyone offend anyone?” This slanderous objection is of heretical profession, which prejudges good things in order to assert evil things, which pronounces against holiness in order subtly to introduce impurity, which raises slanders about what is lawful in order to obtain what is unlawful. For this reason the apostle Paul answered this heresy beforehand, saying: “Nevertheless neither is woman without man nor man without woman in the Lord.” Far, far be it that women should be excluded everywhere or that permission be given everywhere. They have their places: with a husband, with children, with brothers, with parents, with servants; and in the house of prayer only, alongside all the clergy. But in a single dwelling they do not suitably have companions without kinship. This is the balance that stands; whatever has tilted the balance cannot stand, as Scripture says: “You shall not turn aside to the right or to the left”; and the Lord in the gospel: “Whatever is more is from evil.” Learn now the measure of moderation, you who seek excess through license. Love women amid the sacred solemnities and hate them in private companionship, if you wish to keep the teaching of Solomon: “a time to love,” he says, “and a time to hate.”

The company of women must be guarded against, then, when the business of carnal cares is carried on in continual agreement; for amid its cares the flesh always provokes incitements of desire and gives birth to kindlings of sin there, where, handling the conveniences of temporal life, it has felt itself relaxed a little by its thoughts, as Solomon asserts, saying: “The earthly dwelling weighs down the mind that thinks of many things.” But in the assembly of the sacred rites, where the Spirit rules, the handmaid, knowing herself, loses the use of her pleasure, loses luxury too while heavenly things are treated, while the holy mysteries are celebrated. All humanity is occupied where all things are not human but divine; where veneration, or terror and trembling, strikes all minds, carnal substance is surely buried. Even amid the very traffic of the flesh many neglect bodily pleasure, when soldiers in the legions practice the exercises of their years, or the forum resounds with lawsuits, or lecture halls echo with letters, or merchants press on with their trade, or craftsmen are bent on their crafts: how much more where the work carried on is not the carnal work of men but the spiritual work of angels? Attacks can do nothing there, where the demons themselves give way, and no difference of either sex is allowed to be considered, where neither age nor rank but equality alone reigns; and, to say it more fully, all there receive such sense that even married life is forgotten, where Christ speaks, is heard, is attended to, and through all and in all he alone is everything, as the apostle testifies, saying: “where there is not Jew and Greek, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian and Scythian, male and female, slave and free, but Christ is all and in all.” It is plainly a glory to celebrate this assembly with women, in which there is no distinction of kind, which is permitted to make all equal without any difference, so that even in baptism no one's nakedness blushes, where the infancy of Adam and Eve is renewed, and one does not lay aside but rather receives a tunic.

And if even there someone worse than the devil is struck by the sight of women, our congregation is not blamed for anyone, since it is gathered for heavenly, not earthly, things. Let him see to it who is wicked there with lustful looks; he in no way harms another who has come forward not to a man but to Christ, for salvation. Indeed, I will shut out the objectors by their own objections, so that they yield not to my propositions but to theirs. If amid the sacred feasts the common assembly can be scandalized, where the tempter, the devil himself, trembles, who will promise himself to be steadfast there where the tempter boldly meets him? And if we are in danger there where God's precepts gather us, what do we do where God's commands separate us? And if we are troubled where we are protected by God's will, how much more where we have against us not only the devil but also the Lord? For with the most sacred commands divine protection is supplied to us, as Isaiah says: “He gave the Law as a help”; but without divine commands there can be no protection.

It is one thing to do what God commands and another to resist his will. His commands must be kept in such a way that, if he commands something that seems unjust by human standards, it is believed just and done; and if he commands something just, it is counted just and done; since what he commands cannot be without victory, he who is able, by justifying, to call injustice justice, and, by rejecting, to prove justice crooked injustice, whose will alone is true justice. For if everything we do, we do only to please the Lord, then surely only that will be just which God wills and commands and approves, whom we long to please. For since servants cannot know of themselves what pleases their masters unless they follow their masters' orders, and since men themselves cannot know the wills of men like themselves unless they receive what they are to observe, much more do mortals not know how to grasp the justice of the immortal God, unless he himself deigns to show the signs of his justice, as Solomon approves, saying: “For who among men can know the counsel of God? Or who can think what God wills? For the thoughts of mortals are timid, and our designs uncertain. For the body that is corrupted weighs down the soul, and the earthly dwelling presses down the mind that thinks of many things. We hardly estimate what is on earth, and we find with labor what is before us; but who will search out what is in heaven? And who knows your mind unless you give wisdom and send your Holy Spirit from on high? And so the paths of those on earth were corrected, and men learned what pleases you, and were healed by wisdom.” Those walking in darkness cannot show themselves light, unless the light offers itself of its own accord to those who do not see. So human blindness does not direct its way to God unless he himself shows the lamp of the Law. Hence David speaks thus: “Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my paths.” And again: “The commandment of the Lord is bright, enlightening the eyes.” This, then, is light-bearing, whatever has been made known by God; and this is worthy of God, which God himself declares acceptable to his will, so that he may exercise his lordship through all things. Otherwise neither should we be enrolled as servants, nor would he be held as Lord, if we were permitted to render service according to our own will, and chose exercises of righteousness by our own judgment, not God's. Such the apostle Paul makes vain, saying: “Being ignorant of God's righteousness and wishing to establish their own, they have not submitted to the righteousness of God.” Let these vain evasions and these empty, slanderous complaints now be taken out of the way. With God's help we do not fear to be united with women for spiritual acts, since we believe that by God's command we are working righteousness, from which we know that defenses are placed beneath us. But in private, dwellings must be kept separate as much as possible for clergy and virgins who practice continence, because what God judges wrong cannot be right. Cohabitation, even if no shameful practice is known in that very cohabitation, kindles; for it is impossible for integrity to reach victory when it strives to fight against God's commands. For as much as the Law supplies help to the obedient, so much does it incite, or rather it incites sin in, the disobedient, as the apostle says: “The power of sin is the Law.” He, then, who commanded us to triumph with women in his sacred rites himself commands us to beware of battles with women in private.

There are indeed other necessities which compel us to see women in private as well; but these very things the efficacy of divine precept and work commands: that we visit, that we offer consolations, that we wholesomely impart life-giving exhortations. Yet in these duties too no less care must be taken for our conduct, so that signs of purity may shine in our work. Let there be no lack of severity, which can restrain a woman under a cleric, so that she receives our consolation with trembling and so feels the affection of the visit that she reveres the cleric. And, not to wander too slowly through each point, everything we do can be honorable if signs of honor always shine in us, as the apostle Paul embraced all, saying: “Let all your things be done honorably.” And again: “As we have instructed you, walk honorably.” Whatever is done haphazardly does not turn out well, and what is done as holy is not holy unless what is holy is carried out holily, as Solomon asserts, saying: “For those who keep just things justly will be justified.” Sincerity itself, then, must be kept sincerely, and everything that belongs to the vow must also be sealed in act, lest vows commend one thing and acts suggest another. On every side the setting of the will must be proved, and on every side the course of each contest must be completed, lest something be lacking to the triumph if one does not fight more fully. Hence the apostle Paul introduces the lessons of contests: “And whoever competes in the games,” he says, “is not crowned unless he competes lawfully.” And again: “Do you not know that those who run in the stadium all run, but one receives the prize? So run that you may obtain it. And everyone who competes in the contest is self-controlled in all things; they to receive a perishable crown, but we an imperishable.” This, then, is the fullness of holiness and the perfect palm: that on every side one has nothing with him that he refuses, lest by keeping what he professes to hate he seem to love it.

But if someone says, “I hold my adversary captive, to insult him always,” let him see that the captive does not perhaps begin to prevail against him. A thief is never safely kept shut up with a treasure, nor is a lamb safe living in one cage with a wolf. He willed himself to be penetrated who brought his own enemy within his gates; and he put a sword into his own bowels who opened the place of his dwelling to his adversary's entry; and he who trusts himself to live with an occasion of stumbling says in vain, “I want to be at peace with the devil,” against the apostle who says: “Give no place to the devil.” By every means, then, the place where a treasure has been hidden must be fortified, lest through one hole the thief dig through the whole wall. For if, attacking from outside, he is barely driven off by the walls, how strong will he be if he has received a dwelling within the walls? And if those who shut him out are sometimes taken by him, how much more one who has willingly opened an entrance to him, since Solomon says: “If the righteous is scarcely saved, where will the sinner and the ungodly appear?” All chinks, then, not to say gates, must be closed, lest through one hole the whole camp be penetrated; and all defenses must be set in order, lest through a little that is unfortified the whole city fall, as Solomon repeats, saying: “He who despises small things will fall little by little.”

I am astonished, however, at the judgment of this perversity, that a woman rather than a man is chosen by clergy for a shared household. Is a woman more useful for a cleric's needs than a continent man or a boy is to a continent man? Or will that be a seemly usefulness which an unseemly companionship produces? And where will be what Solomon says: “Every animal loves its like”? And again: “Birds gather to their like.” But even if a woman were thought more useful, carnal advantages ought not to be put before the benefits of spiritual goods; and it was better to put up with any useless man for the sake of guarding one's reputation than to have a woman's good services with a most shameful reputation. Solomon compares this, saying: “Better is the wickedness of a man than a woman who does good.” The devil's favors, then, are always artful. Exercising the ingenuity of his cunning by them, he helps those devoted to holiness with deceitful conveniences in order to destroy them; and, supplying among the continent apparently necessary advantages by mutual assistance, he first drives a man and a woman together, so that after he has made them inseparable through mutual comforts, he may kill simple souls who give themselves to keeping vows of chastity. And withdrawing the arms of his attack, meanwhile, as a calm patron, he suggests proofs of holiness, until he has long nourished a hostile friendship between the two. He makes them affable toward each other and devoted in service; and, a hostile flatterer, removing all obstacles, he rejoices to lend efficacy to their conveniences, so that, commending them to each other with every necessity, he can show them hanging on each other in habitual comfort. He does not wish to hinder them in anything, lest he separate them spiritually as well as carnally. He makes them live unshaken, lest an untimely beginning disturb the compacts of their companionship once begun. He so invites, fosters, and raises them toward the perfection of holiness, while all look on, that they count as God's benefits the very hostile favors by which they are led to perish, not knowing that God never helps what he forbids. Flattering them, the devil so prepares a sense of security in holiness that they think they remain unmoved by lust more firmly when joined than when separated. Leading them with all calm, he disturbs them with no storms or waves, and, as in the middle of the sea, he induces the less cautious to slacken the sails and not look for the rudder, so that he may drown them, roused by a sudden tempest, as shipwrecked by an unexpected commotion. He first shows this gentleness so as to entice two ships to come together; and when he has joined them, he can dash and break them against each other with sudden whirlwinds. He uses these blandishments, withdrawing all darts, checking adversities, suggesting prosperity, and he hides the smoldering fire without any flames until, joining two torches, he kindles both at once; and he refrains so long from setting the weapons of his savagery that, like an expert hunter, he binds what he is going to kill in the cords of his snare. But when he has bound them with an unbreakable chain, like a gladiator trainer he at once compels two gladiators to arm against each other, and then, goading their limbs, immediately fits the swords, immediately kindles the madness, and thrusting both into wounding embraces kills them at once with one blow. So he unfolds what he seems at first to provide; so out of simple love he forges an unlawful love; so through holiness he brings in destruction; while he is content to yield, so he is able to seize more strongly; and while, submissive, he lets himself appear conquered, so he boasts of conquering more fully. The apostle Paul understands his tricks, saying: “For we are not ignorant of his devices.” Badly, then, are they at peace in this partnership who, while the devil makes peace, are led to wars; and they do not advance well in holiness, for whom advancement itself is suborned to their harm by the enemy's art; nor do they strive to climb the ladder of continence by a straight course, whom the adversary labors to draw up to the summit in order to hurl them from on high. But those who have kept to a slippery way must be dashed down by falling lapses, of which Solomon proclaims thus: “There is a way that seems right among men, but its end comes into the depth of the underworld.”

But they say: “If clergy are censured for this union, then many saints with us are to be censured too: whether Elijah, who stayed with a widow; or the apostles, who took women about with them as companions; or John, who took the Lord's mother at the Lord's own charge; or the Lord himself, to whom certain religious women supplied food from their means, whom Martha also served at table, who spoke alone, sitting at the well, with a foreign woman of Samaria, and whose feet, as he reclined, a woman washed with tears and wiped with her hair.” Cunning debaters and deceitful jurists, who, while they wish to transgress, overturn the very laws of disputes and lawsuits; and when they will not be restrained by the competent commands of the laws, they put forward, to mock the judges, unsuitable examples as if they were similar inferences of law. They are exposed through Solomon by the shrewdness of the Law itself: “A sinful man,” he says, “avoids correction and finds a comparison to suit his will.” Such people, then, must first be refuted not by argument but by rebuke, so that they are not instructed by interpreted arguments before they have lost what they found as a support for their defense; as Solomon teaches us against such men, saying: “Do not answer a fool according to his folly, lest you become like him; but answer a fool against his folly, lest he seem wise to himself.”

Truly they are great men who compare themselves with the saints, and an outstanding way of life is ours, which seems equal to the prophets or apostles! For the occasion of our luxury we wish to imitate the saints perversely, and in their other acts we do not wish to follow the footsteps of the righteous. In some things we excuse ourselves as too weak to imitate the deeds of our forebears, and in others we declare ourselves equal to them; when Elijah himself, set in distress, confesses before God that he is unequal to his fathers: “Am I better,” he says, “than my fathers?” Elijah is compelled to cry this of his predecessors in his weakness; and we do not hesitate to make our virtue equal to Elijah, or to the prophets and apostles and the Lord? I see plainly that greed is so trampled among us as the apostles left all their own things. I see that gluttony and drunkenness are so absent from our banquets as the apostles, having nothing, were often forced to go hungry. I recognize that fasts, thirst, hunger, and nakedness for the sake of the urgency of teaching alone flourish everywhere among us, just as we read that they triumphed in the apostles. And it is proved that among us the same exercises of virtue are fervent at which all vices trembled before the apostles. We clearly practice the Lord's forty-day fast and the prayers and vigils by which he broke even the silences of the night in the deserts! Do we engage in similar contests against the struggles of vices, and act with such rigor, authority, vigils, sufferings, labor, need, affliction, and abstinence, by which sins are trampled, that no one suspects anything evil of us? It is through these that the apostle Paul boasts that his conscience has been made known to all: “In all things,” he says, “commending ourselves as ministers of God, in much endurance, in afflictions, in tribulations, in necessities, in distresses, in beatings, in imprisonments, in prisons, in riots, in invocations, in labors, in vigils, in fasts, in chastity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Holy Spirit, in love unfeigned, in the word of truth, in the power of God, by the weapons of righteousness on the right and on the left.” For these imitations we are weak; but for taking women about with us we claim the possibility of matching their imitation. And even if someone boasted that he fulfilled all their deeds, no one's persuasion could incline me to believe that there are other apostles now, against the declaration of the apostle Paul: “Are all apostles? Are all prophets?” If Christ dared to compare himself with God, who said, “The Father is greater than I,” or if the apostles dared to make themselves equal to Christ, then let a like strength make us today, today, equal to the apostles! Wretched humanity, are you not afraid of being struck by lightning in this equality, you who do not hesitate to borrow, as if similar, examples for your sins from the Son of God or from the sons of thunder? So great is the elated boasting of pride as to wish to be enrolled as comparable even to the least in the church, when Paul warns and says: “each counting the other better than himself.” And below he added, saying: “Think this among yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.”

We must certainly think less of our own strength, and our weakness must not be compared with the strength of the saints, as the apostle Paul sets forth a lesson for us from himself, saying: “For we do not dare to compare or measure ourselves with some who commend themselves; but we, commending ourselves to ourselves in ourselves, do not boast beyond measure, but according to the measure of the glory which God has measured out to us.” But we consider what he said again: “I labored more than all of them.” Nothing better, nothing more fitting, is set before me with which to conquer, than that I myself should answer from the very one from whom I am answered. Certainly he labored more than all; and yet he trembled to imitate his colleagues in taking women about, lest he expose himself to an uncertain carnal temptation. He himself gave the reason thus: “I so run,” he says, “not as uncertainly; I so fight, not as one beating the air; but I afflict my body and bring it into subjection, lest perhaps, having preached to others, I myself should be found reprobate.” Compare yourself, then, with him, you who boast that you are an apostle, and learn from him what you should fear, who cries and says: “I beg you, be imitators of me.” He, then, who was not ignorant of how much some virtues differ from others, and had made known, by comparison with the gifts of the church, that the glory of the sun and of the moon is one thing, and that of the stars another, would not have confidence about taking women about. But we, on the contrary, flatter ourselves on our equality with the apostles, not looking closely at what the apostles and all the saints did by unconquered virtue; and we seek to break through a difficult way, when a plainer one is set before us through easy things, against Solomon, who says: “Do not trust yourself to a laborious way, lest you set a stumbling block for your soul.” Nor does anyone consider that one man walks safely on slippery ground and another who is unequal to it falls; one climbs mountains running over rocks, and another, if he strains himself, falls; it falls to one to bring ships happily through storms, and such good fortune cannot come to another. The apostle Paul decides this, saying: “Each has his own gift from God, one of this kind, another of that.”

But why do those who confront me with the example of the saints not wish to contemplate another example which they should fear? And why does he who strives to be equal to the apostles not rather set before himself, to frighten himself, the adulterous elders in Daniel? I do not put this forward in order to contradict, as it were, the imitators of the apostles, but to confound those who make themselves equal to the saints. Nor do I deny that we must all follow those whom we have received as teachers; but I contend against those who, wishing to distort the stories of good men to suit their own evils, think the Law supports them, like all who hasten to perish, so that under cover of the saints they want their disgraces hidden, and under imitation of the forebears they commit all sorts of contrary things. The apostle Paul exposes and publishes them, saying: “But what I do, I will also do, to cut off the occasion from those who want an occasion, so that in what they boast of they may be found such as we are. For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into apostles of Christ.” They add this to heap up the heap of their perdition, that they defame the good whose example they use for evil; though it would be useful and wholesome enough for them to believe rather that they had not understood the meaning of some story than to think anything dishonorable in the Law. The apostle Paul confounds and rebukes them, saying: “understanding neither what they say nor what they affirm.” And again: “If anyone thinks he knows something, he does not yet know as he ought to know.” The prejudices of the wanton, then, are void, whom the wandering inventions of their perversity lead astray, and who seek stories suited to their minds to expound, borrowing the patronage of the Law for their evildoing. But to those who do well, all things that are written are good, for they receive well what is well said, as the apostle Paul promises: “We know,” he says, “that the Law is good, if one uses it lawfully.”

We have prevailed by confounding the objectors. Now we turn to instructing besides those same people whom we have conquered, so that we neither allow the saints to remain under accusation nor are counted ignorant in giving an account; so that, publicly defeated, they may repent; or, if they will not, we have discharged what belongs to our diligence, so that, as we have satisfied the saying of Solomon above, so we may satisfy also the apostle Paul, who proclaims: “The servant of the Lord must not quarrel, but be gentle to all, apt to teach, patient, correcting with all modesty those who resist, if perhaps God may grant them repentance to know the truth, and they may recover from the snares of the devil, by whom they are held captive at his will.”

Everything that was done by our forebears was done for good reason, so that an authority fortified on every side might be handed on to us, their descendants, against transgressors. To forestall the heresy which we censured above, about receiving women, the Lord, whether by himself or through his servants, relaxed a little, lest by excessive rigor the Lord's workmanship be wholly condemned. Heretics were foreseen by the Lord who abolish marriage and strive to separate, against the principle of nature and against the gospel, those whom the Lord has joined. Forbidding them, an authority was already then being prepared, so that married women should not be forbidden to come to Christ, whom they served in his presence. But even this permission was not provided without moderation, since what it did, it did not for itself but for others. For if the Lord spoke with the Samaritan woman, he taught for an hour and withdrew, and made no defense for continuing excesses. For an hour he allowed Martha too to serve. But what else was there for the Lord than to serve the meals of the heavenly kingdom? Were there banquets in the Lord's presence? Or was there any other drink or food in his majesty's presence than the teaching alone which fed? As the Lord himself testifies, saying: “My food is to do the will of him who sent me.” So the company of women followed the apostles not that they might ruin them, but that they might learn reverence; and they followed to render the service of kindness, as is recorded in the gospel of the Lord and of them alike: “And it came to pass after this,” it says, “that he went through the cities and villages preaching the kingdom of God, and the twelve were with him, and women who had been healed of unclean spirits and infirmities: Mary called Magdalene, from whom seven demons had gone out, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward, and Susanna, and many others, who ministered to him from their means.”

Did single men cling to single women, or did they persist in living in an undisciplined dwelling, sharing an alluring companionship, when almost the whole church saw that they followed not for shameless banquets but to learn the pursuits of good conduct? Nothing is described there that could be made equal to our banquets: no laughter, no jesting is said to have been present; nor is it asserted that, as is still customary among some, a choir of singing virgins soothed the ears with poisonous songs. And to show briefly in the case of the apostles how much loose familiarity could displease them: they were driven to have doubts even about the Lord himself speaking with a woman, had not their proven knowledge of his majesty restrained them; as the evangelist relates, saying: “Meanwhile his disciples came, and marveled that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said to him, ‘What do you seek?’ or ‘Why do you speak with her?’” And what shall I say of the woman who came and threw herself at the Lord's feet, whose grief and weeping the shameless do not blush to claim in defense of their own wantonness? To such a point does their own blindness carry them away that they do not even dare to resist in similar cases, of which Solomon says: “Their malice blinded them, and they did not know the mysteries of God.” John, it is true, is seen to have received the mother of the Lord. But a mother whose conduct the name of mother indicates. Yet I cannot admit other mothers of Christ, nor is she who bore the Majesty to be made equal to all women. Elijah too was commanded by the Lord to leave the wilderness and enter the widow's dwelling. At the Lord's command he labored to stay in a house, he for whom the wilderness provided a palace for rest. The Lord offered him an occasion for doing mighty works, so that in time of famine he might rather supply sufficient food to the widow and her orphans, he who, afflicted with fasts everywhere, had endured want; and he who had been sent to be fed, feeding them instead, caused the miseries of want to be shut out from the wretched. And this cannot favor anyone's looseness, since there was no opportunity for scandal, where, what is worse, he had in passing a needy lodging which any guest would flee. But here, where he was a guest, he fulfilled his task and returned; and even if he had stayed, he could not have been suspect. What sort of affection of shared life was there where there was no food? And what kind of entry did Elijah have to the widow, to whom famine gave hospitality? Whoever you are who wish to be called a disciple of Elijah for living with a widow, first endure the afflictions of the wilderness and the outcome of forty days fasting, and either you will not seek a woman, or there will be no one left to live with a woman; and yet, if you are able, keep yourself. To us, however, the angel and the Lord Christ point out none other than John alone as having come in the spirit and power of Elijah.

Oh, the shame! We are compelled to grieve over what we teach, we who have come to the point of disputing about the awe-inspiring virtues of the saints in comparison with the dissolute. Spare us now, spare us, wantonness! The saints, who carried on religious, modest, venerable, chaste, and decent business with women, never agree with you. Or if you still strive to search out, through the saints, the windings of quibbling, we know that the friends of God are to be remembered only for veneration, as David taught, saying: “But to me your friends, O God, are exceedingly honored.” Let these robbers of modesty and kidnappers of chastity go now and lay out to their little women the troubles of their complaints. With our saints they have no refuge at all; and the church is forbidden by the authority of the apostle Paul to mix with them: “And avoid these,” he says; “for among them are those who creep into houses and lead captive silly women laden with sins, who are led by various desires.”

After this edict, would that they trusted that the examples of angels helped them! They can no longer bend us, who know that angels too fell with women. From them indeed they borrow patronage well enough; but we hear no angel against the apostle Paul: “But even if we,” he says, “or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel other than what we preached to you, let him be accursed.” They are quite mad and burn with the fire of women, all who do not yield to this prohibition; gaping after obscenities, they would rather die than be content to be torn by some separation from the sides of women, so that, to fulfill the filth of their greed, they may not be without the pleasure of a woman even for a moment; and they have this fruit in women, that with their attention always fixed on them they may satisfy the desires of their eyes, lest even a moment pass in which they lacked what they crave. So among them integrity dies, where all living together, whether in feasting or dwelling together, is defiled by corrupt affections. Saint Peter had marked them, saying: “reveling in their feasts, having eyes full of adultery and unceasing sins, enticing unstable souls.” Solomon too notes them: “An abomination before the Lord,” he says, “is one who fixes his eye.” Job plainly testifies that he keeps a pure eye, saying: “And if my heart has consented to my eyes …” Truly, he can avoid being held guilty by his eyes in whom a woman's sudden meeting, against his will, has stirred a scandal, which the mind at once drives out because it did not want it. But he does not deserve to escape the disturbance of his sight who keeps the material of scandal with him, who wishes to enjoy the affections of attention, who seeks to have what thrusts offense on his eyes, whose insatiable greed amid continual stumbling blocks can in no way at all be checked, as Solomon approves, saying: “The underworld and destruction are not satisfied; likewise the eyes of men are insatiable.” And in another place: “The eye is not satisfied with seeing.” And again: “What has been created more wicked than the eye?”

Unmoved by this chastisement, they despise the divine prohibitions with the obstinacy of an unspeakable familiarity, and still plead love besides, when, according to the word of Isaiah, devouring bitterness for sweetness, they cover naked foulness with the veil of a good name, and among them true love is violated under false love. But love cries out and appeals: “I did not join such people; it is another who counterfeits me by pretense. I never oppose God's precepts, I never favor the dissolute, I do not wish holiness to be blamed through me. An adverse brotherhood brings slanders on me; I too have run into dangers among false brothers. Help, my herald, help, apostle Paul; speak my testimony, lest what you proclaim of me be perverted: ‘The end of the commandment is love from a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned.’” Will it be counted love, through which holiness is attacked with the injury of accusations? Or is their brotherhood to be judged sincere through whom the daughters of mother church are led into guilt? If such is marked down as Christian love, without doubt hatreds are better, which, while they separate, stain no one. But this parricidal love usually unites brothers as persecutors, who gladly allow the daughters of the church to be defamed as fornicators because of their companionship, against the love which the apostle Paul taught, saying: “Love of neighbor works no evil.” An excellent proof of love, which not only harms the neighbor by a noxious brotherhood but also does not wish to be subject to the rules of the apostolic command! Let the champions of such love be confounded, judged by those who, for the common good, abandon even the love of kin.

In all the world almost the whole human race is joined together, and everywhere natural kinship is separated by mutual travels abroad. Parents can, children can, brothers can, and, what is more, spouses themselves can break the bonds of nature granted them by God; and clergy cannot refuse a love enslaved to the bonds of women, though God does not grant it but even forbids it? The affinity of their nearest, always longed for, is absent from kinsfolk, and clergy struggle against going away from women who are strangers? They ought to have done it even if the Lord had commanded something peculiar or unusual, since for accomplishing impossible things they have the Holy Spirit, whom worldly people do not have. Hence the apostle John admonishes thus: “Little children, overcome them, for greater is he who is in you than he who is in this world.” But now what is possible even for pagans, not to say Christians, and is seen to be light, is made void among clergy without any effect, so that it is too little for them to despise God's commands unless they have another disgrace besides: that they do not even follow, not to say surpass, the custom of all nations. To them the Lord reproaches through Ezekiel and says: “You have not walked in my statutes nor done my judgments; you have not even done according to the judgments of the nations that are around you.” This love signifies something shameful, since it is thought to be extorted against nature.

I still have something to wonder at: when I see that many husbands and wives among Christians, resolving on continence, choose rather separate dwellings, so that, by a harmonious withdrawal, they may maintain the agreement of their common vows without the provocation of each other's presence, our eunuchs cannot bear to sleep without the company of a woman? Among the former, conjugal love is outweighed by the love of continence; and among the eunuchs, cohabitation with a woman can never be wearisome. Let the love of the eunuchs speak now, let it speak, lest perhaps conjugal love sins rather in this withdrawal, so that the counsel of the apostle Paul seems to have suggested divorce to spouses: “The time that remains is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none.” What a perversion of love is maintained, that those who have strive to be as though they had not, and those who have not boast as though they had! Of these the apostle himself says: “glory in their shame.”

“It is love,” they say. O love that begrudges itself! O charity that longs to be praised for what deserves blame! A great wonder, that the love of virgins makes virgins believed to be like spouses, and the love of spouses makes spouses thought to be like virgins! See the true love which divides in married life in order to join in chastity! See the holy love which leads spouses to separation for common praise! These surely love each other inseparably, who separate from each other in order to win triumphs for themselves; from whom neither crime nor nature nor law nor the Lord nor the apostle has forbidden or taken away the right to live together, but love has persuaded them, with united minds apart, to absent themselves in order to guard their equal vows. But let those see whose love it is that they know, who yield neither to crime nor to nature nor to law nor to the Lord nor to the apostle nor to married life itself; whom a shameful virginity condemns as much as a castrated married life glorifies those others; to whom it may be enough of a disgraceful punishment that eunuchs are judged by spouses. For their rebuke the children of Israel must not be passed over either, who in Ezra did not hesitate to put away wives and children taken against the divine laws, nor tried to excuse themselves against the love of the Lord. Let me speak the truth, if I am permitted: those who now join together for the sake of not dismissing women who are not theirs, what would they do if they were ordered to cast away children and wives? Or when will they be able to renounce their kin for Christ, who put little women not their own before Christ's commands? I say they would more easily deny their own parents for the sake of these little women than be able to leave these little women for Christ, despising what the Lord himself testified in the gospel, saying: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father or mother or wife and children and brothers and sisters and his own life, he cannot be my disciple.”

If those who hesitate to cast off parents are unworthy of Christ, what do they promise themselves whom not parental affection but something else shows to be despisers of Christ? And by this they are made void by the merits of those whom they see, in contemplation of Christ, making no exception of any persons among their kin. And those confound them no less, indeed worse, who, fearing to wrestle not only with another's flesh but even with their own, cut themselves off by amputating their genitals. On them I suspend judgment for now, leaving it to be set out in another discussion. But to confound the eunuchs I do not hesitate to declare those better who do not spare even themselves, not to say dare to offer temptations to women. Let the spiritual eunuchs answer: what madness is there in the love of women, or what mystery in sharing a dwelling with a woman, that they indulge others' members to their own ruin, while those men unhesitatingly cut off even their own? These cast away limbs grown firm in themselves, and those are glued to hostile limbs. These do not hesitate to fight for spiritual integrity with the torment of a body no longer whole; and those refuse to be whole without torment, without their female half. But no comparison is to be made of ours with them, lest those condemned by any Christian judgments take comfort. Some worse ones also must be mentioned, so that the punishment may be greater to be condemned by the condemned. Let them consider the Jews, who to this day, at the command of the Law, cut off part of their flesh by the torment of circumcision, and let them know what they deserve who, though the gospel commands it, neglect to do the Lord's will circumcised from the presence of women, not understanding that the Lord himself said: “Unless your righteousness abounds more than that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven.” I think too that the idolaters insult us reproachfully with their Galli, who, cutting themselves, gladly torture themselves, provided that with damage to their state they obey the pretenses of the idols. But our clergy, for the gain of their own body, prefer to bear the harm of women living with them, whom they ought to tear out even from their own substance if it happened that they were born with them, lest they blush when compared with idolaters and the sacrilegious. Of these the Lord too rebukes the despisers, saying: “The children of this world are wiser than the children of light.” So the profane devotion of such people is to be preferred to our clergy, to whom shameful priesthoods are lovable at the cost of such destruction. But clergy, for the dignity of the heavenly priesthood, do not shed blood, do not endure the knife; there is no wound, no torture; only the sight of a woman burns them against the Lord. So they rush upon women, so they love women, that they do not expect that the pure mysteries of their love can ever be made manifest, as they have been shamefully published and exposed through those like them, whom the apostle Paul already then foresaw, saying: “The sins of some men are manifest, going before to judgment; but some they follow after. Likewise also good deeds are manifest, and whatever is otherwise cannot be hidden.”

But they in turn say: “Some of those who despise us, who likewise had women in their houses, have obtained martyrdom, so that their conscience was proved innocent among them.” Let no one bring an action against me on the ground of martyrdom; for very often adulterers and murderers and drunkards and those guilty of every crime, having found an occasion for combat, were converted and earned the pardon of martyrdom. For martyrdom is called both a crown and a baptism, because it baptizes and crowns alike. Come now: if it was granted to some to earn martyrdom while their companionship with women was inviolate, martyrdom itself was not without pardon for them too, whom the guilt of forbidden cohabitation did not absolve, nor could it prove them innocent in their very innocence, since it is seen to have pardoned in them contempt of the Law, the foulness of an unlawful way of life, and, what is graver than all, a crime against the church. For innocence is harmful which hurts the reputation of the bride of Christ. And since Christ, the innocent Lamb, indeed, more truly, heavenly innocence itself, gave himself up wholly for the church, that he might present her unblemished, without any spot or wrinkle, what kind of cleric is he to whom the bride of Christ is entrusted for this, that for the love of one woman he allows the whole church to be blamed? I would dare to say: the Son was sent from the bosom of the Father by God the Father and endured being absent from the kingdom in order to make the church innocent; and a cleric cannot leave a woman's side, so as not to make Christ's church infamous?

But they say: “In martyrdom we are forgiven, as was granted to our fathers.” Then let all of us too trust this about all sins, so that we who labor to do well may wander amid luxuries and run along the paths of sins, let go the reins and loosen the bridles. Let us go wherever the world carries us off and wherever the devil invites us; let us freely commit sexual immorality, envy, rob, defraud, commit all evils without care: martyrdom will come to our aid and we will escape. For so the apostle Paul promises: “Let us do evil that good may come”; “their condemnation is just.” Let those place their hope in this martyrdom whom astrologers have taught to have foreknowledge of tomorrow; and let those expect these crowns who, above the angels and Christ, have learned through astrologers to know the times which the Father has put in his own authority; so that they may at least remember then that they ought to have done well before the time of martyrdom, when they feel the day of the Lord coming like a thief. But let us believe that martyrdom is hanging over them any moment. Meanwhile, before they become martyrs, they are subject to the laws, so that they are subjected to judgment, unless they are disarmed of their arms. It is a wicked audacity for them to set the persons of their fathers against the Lord's authority; the Lord himself has taken away the voice of this objection: “Do not walk,” he says, “in the statutes of your fathers, nor keep their judgments, nor mix in their pursuits, nor be defiled. I am the Lord your God; walk in my precepts and keep my judgments.”

Let them know now that the patronage of their fathers has been taken from them, who, running back and forth, seek the hiding places of objections so as never to be without women. And because they are deserted on every side by the support of a defense, finally, with all arguments exhausted, they think the sentence of the apostle Paul helps them, and say: “Who are you to judge another's servant?” The apostle Paul indeed recognizes the words of his ruling that they cite, but he does not know the rulers and citers themselves. For he gave that defense to those who attack no part of the Law, and granted that patronage to those who do something by their own vow and hinder nothing of the church's law. He is treating the right of eating and of not eating, confirming each one's choice. In such matters he commanded that no one be judged, since divine authority, granting them to the will of individuals, kindly allowed doing and not doing on either side. But he subjected to the church's tribunals those transgressors of the ordinary rule whom no impunity excused; so that those who everywhere put forward against us “Who are you to judge another's servant?” as a counter-plea may recognize the reasoned and certain rejoinder which we have received from the same apostle Paul: “We command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you withdraw from brothers who walk disorderly and not according to the tradition which you received from us.”

We have escaped, I think, such great entanglements of questions, with which the embraces of women have bound the loving eunuchs, who are driven to alter the Law's decrees by perverse interpretations, and would rather be heard putting forward vain and fabulous inventions than themselves hear what is true. The apostle Paul announces them, saying: “They will turn their hearing away from the truth and turn aside to fables.” Whatever they may still wish to search out, so as to resist the truth for the sake of women, they have no victory, for among them, contrary to Ezra, woman rather than truth has conquered. But you, dearest sons, I address not only by persuasion but also by authority. Despise such madness, whose questions you know the apostle Paul condemned everywhere, as he wrote to the Romans: “I beg you, brothers, to watch carefully those who say or do dissensions and offenses contrary to the teaching you have learned, and turn away from them.” So too he charges Timothy: “Do not quarrel about words; it is of no use, except for the ruin of the hearers. Take care to present yourself approved to God, a workman not to be blamed, rightly handling the word of truth. But avoid foolish and empty talk; for it advances much to impiety, and their word spreads like a cancer.” And to show what teaching is fitting for the clergy who are to be appointed, to empty such questions, he suggests thus to Titus too: “But you speak what befits sound teaching: that the older men be sober, prudent, sound in faith, in love, in sincere patience.” Let your obedience, then, receive simple teachings and avoid the shifty deceit of objections. Clear a pure path for your steps and do not tread upon thorns and thistles, lest the good seed be unable to bring forth for you the fruit of holiness because of the thickets of thorns. Hence the prophet Jeremiah exhorts and teaches thus: “Do not sow among thorns. Circumcise yourselves to your God, circumcise the foreskin of your heart.” Everything, then, that usually pricks and tears must be cut away from your field, lest the farmer's mind be caught in his own property by malignant briars. And we must cut off everything with which the furnace of seething flesh boils over, teeming with the sulfurous flames of fiery tinder, lest even a tiny spark preserved should kindle greater fires. Solomon shows this, saying: “From one spark the fire grows.” Turn away impure occasions, by which the inner parts of the breast are penetrated, so that a clear transparency may be honored in you. Be content rather to endure a laborious solitary life to preserve modesty than to come to disgrace without labor.

Consider what it is to preside over a holy people, and reflect what it is to attend upon the divine sacraments. Those who live by the altar must please the altar, and the care for sincerity fitting for consecrated men must be such as the sacred things themselves to which they render the duties of service, lest they themselves offend before the Lord in what they handle, or begin to hinder before the people what they preach. For this reason the apostle Paul testifies thus and says: “And we endure all things, lest we put any hindrance in the way of the gospel of Christ.” And again: “giving no offense to anyone, so that our ministry may not be blamed.” By this instruction, then, you must labor as much as possible over those for whom, to show their gravity, solitary living rather than paired living is the true witness. Consider how many evils the conduct of this pairing acquires, which sows nothing but corruption, sprouts vices, conceives desire, gives birth to disgrace, stirs up rage, offers frenzy, feeds wantonness, nourishes petulance, exalts falls, builds ruins, raises riverbanks, prepares precipices, sails into dangers, spreads sail for shipwrecks, rejoices in perdition, fosters destruction, purchases confusion, treasures up reproach, heaps up accusations, inflames charges, and, rolling together in troops at once into a bundle numberless snares of capture, brings manifold deaths through endless disgraces to the ruin of the lost.

So many and such great massacres of calamity and of the worst conduct no one lays low, no one tramples, no one destroys, except solitary chastity alone, which is the unconquered fortification of holiness and the strong storming of infamy, the firmness of strength and the weakness of petulant wantonness, the defense of honesty and the overthrow of dishonesty, the victory of the soul and the spoil of the body, the abundance of glories and the captivity of crimes, the bridesmaid of holiness and the divorce of shamefulness, the sign of sincerity and the abolition of scandals, the exercise of continence and the entire emptying of luxury, the secure peace of virtues and the quiet ending of wars, the summit of purity and the prison of lust, the harbor of honor and the place of shipwreck for disgrace, the mother of virginity and the enemy of impurity, the breastplate of modesty and the spoil of shamelessness, the destruction of corruption, the wall of strictness and the demolition of vulgarity, the sword of severity, the conqueror and slayer of dissoluteness, the armor of strength and the disarming of looseness, the dignity of integrity and the condemnation of sexual immorality, the pinnacle of glory and the precipice of disgrace, the will for good works and the affliction of vices, the refreshment of modesty and the punishment of petulance, the gaining of triumphs and the loss of crimes, the rest of salvation and the exile of perdition, the life of the spirit and the death of the flesh, the state of angelic quality, the funeral of human substance. By its reins all obscenity is bridled, and by its fetters the heels of raging lust are held fast. On it, as on a rock, the onslaughts of overflowing blood, of whatever kind, are broken, and in it the foaming madness of bodily swelling is calmed. While it withdraws from itself the supports of desire, it is known to carry its members dead, of which the apostle Paul forewarns, saying: “Put to death, then, your members which are on earth: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desire, and greed, which is the service of idols, on account of which the wrath of God comes.”

From all these things human nature is castrated only by the shining knife of solitary living, so that it may bring unblemished eunuchs to the banquet of holiness, with circumcision as the one who betroths. To her holiness has so promised the wedding seal of its ring that without it virginity is unsealed. Content with itself alone, it tames desire and makes the mind chaste, subdues concupiscence, extinguishes the desires of passion, weakens the limbs, enslaves the body, and so crucifies carnal things that both male and female seem to belie themselves in their way of life, since it cuts them off from the activity of either sex; or, making neither of the two, it glories in conferring a third form on both, so that before the resurrection it is known to rehearse the image of the resurrection after the likeness of the angels. The Lord, promising this for the future, says: “Those who are counted worthy of that age and of the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they will no longer die; for they are like the angels of God, since they are children of the resurrection.” Holy solitary living demands this of its merits: that before it is transfigured it may already be seen transfigured into the appearance of angelic glory, cutting off from itself all the contests of concupiscence and despoiling them. Solomon sets forth its praises, saying: “Better is it to be without children, with glory; for immortality is in its memory, because it is known both with God and with men. When it is present, they imitate it, and they long for it when it has departed; and crowned forever it triumphs, winning the contest of undefiled struggles.”

Only solitary living is “without children, with glory,” which not only its conscience stains with no filth, but no suspicious opinions of paired living defame either. For if chastity, which is difficult, preserves a man and a woman alike in virginity, it does not have glory, which shared living itself cannot but obscure with certain shadows of shamefulness. But solitary living is so clear and open to all that it is shown to everyone pure and bright in the splendor of its whiteness. Hence the apostle teaches us thus: “Walk as children of light; for the fruit of light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth, proving what is pleasing to God.” And again: “Do all things without murmuring and hesitation, that you may be blameless and simple, as children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world.” So solitary living shines everywhere, that all do not hesitate to vouch for it; and it so makes holiness bright in itself that it wrings praise for itself even from enemies. The apostle Paul commands this especially of every overseer, saying: “He must also have a good testimony from those outside, so that he may not fall into reproach and the snare of the devil.” Love it, then; hold it fast, which alone can conquer women. While no desire yet strikes the breast, and while simplicity still remains uncorrupted or quiet, run quickly to the secret protection of solitary living, lest afterward you be unable to escape.

Every approach must be secured beforehand against all snares, lest hostility, creeping up first, meet the unprepared. It is a saving remedy to forestall rather than be forestalled, and it befits brave men to anticipate rather than be anticipated. Wherever there is foresight, all adversities are frustrated; but where foresight is neglected, all adversities rule. We struggle before famine; we exert ourselves by labor before want. So in everything we take away the place for all calamities, while we exercise foresight for future times. How much more must the calamity of women be forestalled by every provision, whose desire, if it is allowed to begin, never accepts an end at all? Solomon sets out its comparison, saying: “The underworld and the love of a woman, and the earth that is not satisfied with water, and fire, do not say, ‘Enough.’” So let each one who is secure because he is not yet tempted be afraid. Because nothing is said of him, let him take care that it is not said. We are human; we carry our frailty in the flesh. So we must now surround and gird ourselves on every side with watchful vigor, so that there is no part that wavers. We do indeed receive spiritual strength, by which the frailty of our substance is strengthened. But spiritual strength has been conferred on us in such a way that it protects the provident, not the reckless; that it fortifies those who renounce the importunities of sins, not those who plunge themselves rather into importunate sins. The Spirit has been given us as guardian, but to help by standing by those who turn aside from adversities, not to favor those who choose them; nor to strengthen those who are willing and inclined toward adversities, but to confirm those who strive to be separated from them. For whoever dares to exercise strength by ruinous attempts does not have the help of the Holy Spirit, who wants no man to be pressed, of his own accord, into deceitful victories as a brave man; nor does he protect him, but rather deserts him, whom he knows to be rushing into dangers to seek triumphs by unlawful outcomes; as he himself already then spoke through Solomon, saying: “He who loves danger will perish in it.”

The power of the Holy Spirit, then, is supplied in his order, not by our choice, and battles prosper according to his plan. No army ever fell unless it rushed headlong, eager to do bravely, and broke through the dispositions of its general or emperor; much more does he spend a strength doomed to perish who presumes to triumph without the arms of the teaching of the Spirit, his master, since he says: “Woe to those who do anything by their own presumption, not through God.”

If, then, there is in you any confidence in spiritual strength, let it remember what befits spiritual men; and if you believe you serve as soldiers spiritually, recognize that what we teach is not carnal, as the apostle Paul says: “If anyone thinks himself a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge what I write to you.” There is no reason to flatter yourselves with this deceptive persuasion, that because you are spiritual you may wish to move among the weapons of the wicked; nor that you are unfit for the dignity of the clerical office because greater conflicts usually meet greater men. The rich are envied more keenly than the poor, and the savage attack of robbers troubles not the needy but the wealthy. Generals and princes rather than soldiers are sought by the enemy in battle, and whatever peaks are higher are battered more violently by winds and whirlwinds. Therefore, the more each one can do than others, the more let him know that he must fear lest he be diminished in anything; for which reason Solomon admonishes thus: “He who glories,” he says, “in riches, let him fear poverty.” I beg you, as much as I can and beyond what I can, let this be the endeavor of all clergy: to practice the retirement of a blameless solitary life, lest either they through women or women through them be provoked to disgraceful mockery. If anyone has a mother or daughter or sister or wife or kinswoman, let him have her in such a way that no maidservant is among them and no stranger enters, lest he seem to keep his own relatives for this purpose, that on their account he may freely bring in strangers. And if those who are related cannot be without the service of maidservants or the comfort of friends, it is better that they move to another dwelling than that persons who are a danger be kept because of them. For it is humane that neither the cleric should defraud them of necessary women nor they defile the cleric through unsuitable women. They can be assigned to holy women with whom to live, provided no woman lives with the cleric. No woman, not even a despised or elderly one without kinship, is to be taken especially into domestic service; for sin is committed more quickly where sin can be secure without suspicion, especially since to desire no deformity, no despised appearance, is repulsive or cheap: the devil, painting it, makes beautiful whatever was foul or ugly.

And if anyone, compelled by a journey, lodges with brothers or with strangers where women are present, let him restrain himself altogether, lest he be corrupted by any passion. Withdrawn and secluded, let him devote himself to God and himself, lest he be caught within by the devil, and he who could not be caught outside fall among his own. Having escaped enemies, let him come forward to someone's presence for a time for salutary reasons, and again hasten quickly to depart from sight. Everywhere presence with women must be tasted, not prolonged; access to women is to be shown as if in passing, in a fugitive sort of way. For the beginnings of wantonness are always brought out into the open, and it is a rehearsal of perdition to make frequent appearances among women. On this Solomon imposed a measure on us, saying: “Do not be constantly in the midst of women.” So walk, then, so act, that the senate of the church may always stand spotless in its clergy. Let severity toward women flourish in us, let authority prevail, let vigor be kept, let gravity be revered.

To gather everything together once for the close, we read back to you a summary which the apostle Paul gives, reducing it to a concise fullness: “Finally, brothers,” he says, “whatever things are true, whatever chaste, whatever just, whatever holy, whatever lovely, whatever of good report, if there is any virtue, if any praise of discipline, think on these things, which you have received and learned and heard and seen in me. Do these things, and the God of peace and love will be with you.” Amen.