Letters

⁴ We must also take the passage clause by clause. “I will,” he says, “that the younger women marry.” Why, pray? Because I would not have young women commit fornication. “That they bear children;” for what reason? That they may not be induced by fear of the consequences to kill children whom they have conceived in adultery. “That they be the heads of households.” Wherefore, pray? Because it is much more tolerable that a woman should marry again than that she should be a prostitute, and better that she should have a second husband than several paramours. The first alternative brings relief in a miserable plight, but the second involves a sin and its punishment. He continues: “that they give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully,” a brief and comprehensive precept in which many admonitions are summed up. As for instance these: that a woman must not bring discredit upon her profession of widowhood by too great attention to her dress, that she must not draw troops of young men after her by gay smiles or expressive glances, that she must not profess one thing by her words and another by her behaviour, that she must give no ground for the application to herself of the well known line:

She gave a meaning look and slyly smiled.

Lastly, that Paul may compress into a few words all the reasons for such marriages, he shows the motive of his command by saying: “for some are already turned aside after Satan.” Thus he allows to the incontinent a second marriage, or in case of need a third, simply that he may rescue them from Satan, preferring that a woman should be joined to the worst of husbands rather than to the devil. To the Corinthians he uses somewhat similar language: “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.” Why, O apostle, is it better to marry? He answers immediately: because it is worse to burn.