Against Jovinianus

^30. I pass to the Song of Songs, and whereas our opponent thinks it makes altogether for marriage, I shall show that it contains the mysteries of virginity. Let us hear what the bride says before that the bridegroom comes to earth, suffers, descends to the lower world, and rises again. “We will make for you likenesses of gold with ornaments of silver while the king sits at his table.” Before the Lord rose again, and the Gospel shone, the bride had not gold, but likenesses of gold. As for the silver, however, which she professes to have at the marriage, she not only had silver ornaments, but she had them in variety— in widows, in the continent, and in the married. Then the bridegroom makes answer to the bride, and teaches her that the shadow of the old law has passed away, and the truth of the Gospel has come. “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away, for lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” This relates to the Old Testament. Once more he speaks of the Gospel and of virginity: “The flowers appear on the earth, the time of the pruning of vines has come.” Does he not seem to you to say the very same thing that the Apostle says: “The time is shortened that henceforth both those that have wives may be as though they had none”? And more plainly does he herald chastity: “The voice,” he says, “of the turtle is heard in our land.” The turtle, the chastest of birds, always dwelling in lofty places, is a type of the Saviour. Let us read the works of naturalists and we shall find that it is the nature of the turtle-dove, if it lose its mate, not to take another; and we shall understand that second marriage is repudiated even by dumb birds. And immediately the turtle says to its fellow: “The fig tree has put forth its green figs,” that is, the commandments of the old law have fallen, and the blossoming vines of the Gospel give forth their fragrance. Whence the Apostle also says, “We are a sweet savour of Christ.” “Arise, my love, my fair one, and come away. O my dove, you are in the clefts of the rock, in the covert of the steep place. Let me see your countenance, let me hear your voice; for sweet is your voice, and your countenance is comely.” Whilst you covered your countenance like Moses and the veil of the law remained, I neither saw your face, nor did I condescend to hear your voice. I said, “Yea, when you make many prayers, I will not hear.” But now with unveiled face behold my glory, and shelter yourself in the cleft and steep places of the solid rock. On hearing this the bride disclosed the mysteries of chastity: “My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feeds his flock among the lilies,” that is among the pure virgin bands. Would you know what sort of a throne our true Solomon, the Prince of Peace, has, and what his attendants are like? “Behold,” he says, “it is the litter of Solomon: threescore mighty men are about it, of the mighty men of Israel. They all handle the sword, and are expert in war: every man has his sword upon his thigh.” They who are about Solomon have their sword upon their thigh, like Ehud, the left-handed judge, who slew the fattest of foes, a man devoted to the flesh, and cut short all his pleasures. “I will get me,” he says, “to the mountain of myrrh;” to those, that is, who have mortified their bodies; “and to the hill of frankincense,” to the crowds of pure virgins; “and I will say to my bride, you are all fair, my love, and there is no spot in you.” Whence too the Apostle: “That he might present the church to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.” “Come with me from Lebanon, my bride, with me from Lebanon. You shall come and pass on from the beginning of faith, from the top of Sanir and Hermon, from the lions' dens, from the mountains of the leopards.” Lebanon is, being interpreted, whiteness. Come then, fairest bride, concerning whom it is elsewhere said “Who is she that comes up, all in white?” and pass on by way of this world, from the beginning of faith, and from Sanir, which is by interpretation, God of light, as we read in the psalm: “Your word is a lantern unto my feet, and light unto my path;” and “from Hermon,” that is, consecration: and “flee from the lions' dens, and the mountains of the leopards who cannot change their spots.” Flee, he says, from the lions' dens, flee from the pride of devils, that when you have been consecrated to me, I may be able to say unto you: “You have ravished my heart, my sister, my bride, you have ravished mine heart with one of your eyes, with one chain of your neck.” What he says is something like this— I do not reject marriage: you have a second eye, the left, which I have given to you on account of the weakness of those who cannot see the right. But I am pleased with the right eye of virginity, and if it be blinded the whole body is in darkness. And that we might not think he had in view carnal love and bodily marriage, he at once excludes this meaning by saying “You have ravished my heart, my bride, my sister.” The name sister excludes all suspicion of unhallowed love. “How fair are your breasts with wine,” those breasts concerning which he had said above, My beloved is mine, and I am his: “between my breasts shall he lie,” that is in the princely portion of the heart where the Word of God has its lodging. What wine is that which gives beauty to the breasts of the bride, and fills them with the milk of chastity? That, forsooth, of which the bridegroom goes on to speak: “I have drunk my wine with my milk. Eat, O friends: yea, drink and be drunken, my brethren.” Hence the Apostles also were said to be filled with new wine; with new, he says, not with old wine; because new wine is put into fresh wine-skins, and they did not walk in oldness of the letter, but in newness of the Spirit. This is wine wherewith when youths and maidens are intoxicated, they at once thirst for virginity; they are filled with the spirit of chastity, and the prophecy of Zechariah comes to pass, at least if we follow the Hebrew literally, for he prophesied concerning virgins: “And the streets of the city shall be full of boys and girls playing in the streets thereof. For what is his goodness, and what is his beauty, but the grain of the elect, and wine that gives birth to virgins?” They are virgins of whom it is written in the forty-fifth psalm: “The virgins her companions that follow her shall be brought unto you. With gladness and rejoicing shall they be led: they shall enter into the King's palace.”