13 Let us run through the remaining points, for our author is so voluminous that we cannot linger over every detail. “But and if you marry, you have not sinned.” It is one thing not to sin, another to do good. “And if a virgin marry, she has not sinned.” Not that virgin who has once for all dedicated herself to the service of God: for, should one of these marry, she will have damnation, because she has made of no account her first faith. But, if our adversary objects that this saying relates to widows, we reply that it applies with still greater force to virgins, since marriage is forbidden even to widows whose previous marriage had been lawful.
For virgins who marry after consecration are rather incestuous than adulterous. And, for fear he should by saying, “And if a virgin marry, she has not sinned,” again stimulate the unmarried to be married, he immediately checks himself, and by introducing another consideration, invalidates his previous concession. “Yet,” says he, “such shall have tribulation in the flesh.” Who are they who shall have tribulation in the flesh? They to whom he had before indulgently said “But and if you marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she has not sinned.
Yet such shall have tribulation in the flesh.” We in our inexperience thought that marriage had at least the joys of the flesh. But if they who are married have tribulation even in the flesh, which is imagined to be the sole source of their pleasure, what else is there to marry for, when in the spirit, and in the mind, and in the flesh itself there is tribulation. “But I would spare you.” Thus, he says, I allege tribulation as a motive, as though there were not greater obligations to refrain.
“But this I say, brethren, the time is shortened, that henceforth both those that have wives may be as though they had none.” I am by no means now discussing virgins, of whose happiness no one entertains a doubt. I am coming to the married. The time is short, the Lord is at hand. Even though we lived nine hundred years, as did men of old, yet we ought to think that short which must one day have an end, and cease to be. But, as things are, and it is not so much the joy as the tribulation of marriage that is short, why do we take wives whom we shall soon be compelled to lose?
“And those that weep, and those that rejoice, and those that buy, and those that use the world, as though they wept not, as though they rejoiced not, as though they bought not, as though they did not use the world: for the fashion of this world passes away.” If the world, which comprehends all things, passes away, yea if the fashion and intercourse of the world vanishes like the clouds, among the other works of the world, marriage too will vanish away. For after the resurrection there will be no wedlock.
But if death be the end of marriage, why do we not voluntarily embrace the inevitable? And why do we not, encouraged by the hope of the reward, offer to God that which must be wrung from us against our will. “He that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord: but he that is married is careful for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and is divided.” Let us look at the difference between the cares of the virgin, and those of the married man.
The virgin longs to please the Lord, the husband to please his wife, and that he may please her he is careful for the things of the world, which will of course pass away with the world. “And he is divided,” that is to say, is distracted with manifold cares and miseries. This is not the place to describe the difficulties of marriage, and to revel in rhetorical commonplaces. I think I delivered myself fully as regards this point in my argument against Helvidius, and in the book which I addressed to Eustochium.
At all events Tertullian, while still a young man, gave himself full play with this subject. And my teacher, Gregory of Nazianzus, discussed virginity and marriage in some Greek verses. I now briefly beg my reader to note that in the Latin manuscripts we have the reading “there is a difference also between the virgin and the wife.” The words, it is true, have a meaning of their own, and have by me, as well as by others, been so explained as showing the bearing of the passage. Yet they lack apostolic authority, since the Apostle's words are as we have translated them— “He is careful for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided.”
Having laid down this, he passes to the virgins and the continent, and says “The woman that is unmarried and a virgin thinks of the things of the Lord, that she may be holy in body and in spirit.” Not every unmarried woman is also a virgin. But every virgin is of course unmarried. It may be, that regard for elegance of expression led him to repeat the same idea by means of another word and speak of “a woman unmarried and a virgin”; or at least he may have wished to give to “unmarried” the definite meaning of “virgin,” so that we might not suppose him to include harlots, united to no one by the fixed bonds of wedlock, among the “unmarried.”
Of what, then, does she that is unmarried and a virgin think? “The things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit.” Supposing there were nothing else, and that no greater reward followed virginity, this would be motive enough for her choice, to think of the things of the Lord. But he immediately points out the contents of her thought— that she may be holy both in body and spirit. For there are virgins in the flesh, not in the spirit, whose body is intact, their soul corrupt.
But that virgin is a sacrifice to Christ, whose mind has not been defiled by thought, nor her flesh by lust. On the other hand, she who is married thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband. Just as the man who has a wife is anxious for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, so the married woman thinks of the things of the world, how she may please her husband. But we are not of this world, which lies in wickedness, the fashion of which passes away, and concerning which the Lord said to the Apostles, “If you were of the world, the world would love its own.”
And lest perchance someone might suppose that he was laying the heavy burden of chastity on unwilling shoulders, he at once adds his reasons for persuading to it, and says: “And this I say for your profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is seemly, and that you may attend upon the Lord without distraction.” The Latin words do not convey the meaning of the Greek. What words shall we use to render Πρὸς τὸ εὔσχημον κὰι εὐπρόσεδρον τῷ Κυρί& 251· ἀπερισπάστως ' The difficulty of translation accounts for the fact that the clause is completely wanting in Latin manuscripts.
Let us, however, use the passage as we have translated it. The Apostle does not lay a snare upon us, nor does he compel us to be what we do not wish to be; but he gives his advice as to what is fair and seemly, he would have us attend upon the Lord and ever be anxious about that service, and await the Lord's will, so that like active and well-armed soldiers we may obey orders, and may do so without distraction, which, according to Ecclesiastes, is given to the men of this world that they may be exercised thereby.
But if anyone considers that his virgin, that is, his flesh, is wanton and boiling with lust, and cannot be bridled, and he must do one of two things, either take a wife or fall, let him do what he will, he does not sin if he marry. Let him do, he says, what he will, not what he ought. He does not sin if he marry a wife; yet, he does not well if he marry: “But he that stands steadfast in his heart, having no necessity, but has power as touching his own will, and has determined this in his own heart, to keep his own virgin, shall do well.
So then both he that gives his own virgin in marriage does well; and he that gives her not in marriage shall do better.” With marked propriety he had previously said “He who marries a wife does not sin”: here he tells us “He that keeps his own virgin does well.” But it is one thing not to sin, another to do well. “Depart from evil,” he says, “and do good.” The former we forsake, the latter we follow. In this last lies perfection. But whereas he says “and he that gives his virgin in marriage does well,” it might be supposed that our remark does not hold good; he therefore immediately detracts from this seeming good and puts it in the shade by comparing it with another, and saying, “and he that gives her not in marriage shall do better.”
If he had not intended to draw the inference of doing better, he would never have previously referred to doing well. But where there is something good and something better, the reward is not in both cases the same, and where the reward is not one and the same, there of course the gifts are different. The difference, then, between marriage and virginity is as great as that between not sinning and doing well; nay rather, to speak less harshly, as great as between good and better.
Source: Against Jovinianus (New Advent)