Letters

³ Who would not grieve over such things and say, “How is the faithful city become an harlot?” How would not the Lord Himself say to some of those who are now walking in the spirit of Jeremiah, “Have you seen what the virgin of Israel has done to me?” I betrothed her to me in trust, in purity, in righteousness, in judgment, in pity, and in mercy; as I promised her through Hosea the prophet. But she loved strangers, and while I, her husband, was yet alive, she is called adulteress, and is not afraid to belong to another husband.

What then says the conductor of the bride, the divine and blessed Paul, both that one of old, and the later one of today under whose mediation and instruction you left your father's house and were united to the Lord? Might not either, in sorrow for such a trouble, say, “The thing which I greatly feared has come upon me, and that which I was afraid of has come unto me.” “I have espoused you to one husband that I may present you as a chaste virgin to Christ.” I was indeed ever afraid “lest by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your mind should be corrupted;” wherefore by countless counter-charms I strove to control the agitation of your senses, and by countless safeguards to preserve the bride of the Lord.

So I continually set forth the life of the unmarried maid, and described how “the unmarried” alone “cares for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit.” I used to describe the high dignity of virginity, and, addressing you as a temple of God, used as it were to give wings to your zeal as I strove to lift you to Jesus. Yet through fear of evil I helped you not to fall by the words “if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy.” So by my prayers I tried to make you more secure, if by any means “your body, soul, and spirit might be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” Yet all my toil on your behalf has been in vain.

Bitter to me has been the end of those sweet labours. Now I needs must groan again at that over which I ought to have rejoiced. You have been deceived by the serpent more bitterly than Eve; and not only your mind but also your body has been defiled. Even that last horror has come to pass which I shrink from saying, and yet cannot leave unsaid, for it is as a burning and blazing fire in my bones, and I am undone and cannot endure. You have taken the members of Christ and made them the members of a harlot. This is an evil with which no other can be matched.

This outrage in life is new. “For pass over the Isles of Chittim and see; and send unto Chedar and consider diligently, and see if there be such a thing. Hath a nation changed their gods which are yet no gods.” But the virgin has changed her glory, and her glory is in her shame. The heavens are astonished at this, and the earth is horribly afraid, says the Lord, for the virgin has committed two evils; she has forsaken Me, the true and holy Bridegroom of holy souls, and has betaken herself to an impious and lawless destroyer of body and soul alike. She has revolted from God, her Saviour, and yielded her members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity. She forgot me and went after her lover from whom she will get no good.