Letters

⁴ As the brief compass of a letter does not suffer us to delay too long on a single point, let us now pass to those which remain. In explaining the testimony of the apostle, “The wife has not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise, also, the husband has not power of his own body, but the wife,” we have subjoined the following: “The entire question relates to those who are living in wedlock, whether it is lawful for them to put away their wives, a thing which the Lord also has forbidden in the Gospel. Hence, also, the apostle says: 'It is good for a man not to touch' a wife or 'a woman,' as if there were danger in the contact which he who should so touch one could not escape.

Accordingly, when the Egyptian woman desired to touch Joseph he flung away his cloak and fled from her hands. But as he who has once married a wife cannot, except by consent, abstain from intercourse with her or repudiate her, so long as she does not sin, he must render unto his wife her due, because he has of his own free will bound himself to render it under compulsion.” Can one who declares that it is a precept of the Lord that wives should not be put away, and that what God has joined together man must not, without consent, put asunder — can such an one be said to condemn marriage?

Again, in the verses which follow, the apostle says: “But every man has his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.” In explanation of this saying we made the following remarks: “What I myself would wish, he says, is clear. But since there are diversities of gifts in the church, I allow marriage as well, that I may not appear to condemn nature. Reflect, too, that the gift of virginity is one thing, that of marriage another. For had there been one reward for married women and for virgins he would never, after giving the counsel of continence, have gone on to say: 'But every man has his proper gift of God, one after this manner and another after that.'

Where each class has its proper gift, there must be some distinction between the classes. I allow that marriage, as well as virginity, is the gift of God, but there is a great difference between gift and gift. Finally, the apostle himself says of one who had lived in incest and afterwards repented: 'Contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him and comfort him,' and 'To whom you forgive anything, I forgive also.' And, lest we might suppose a man's gift to be but a small thing, he has added: 'For if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the sight of Christ.' The gifts of Christ are different.

Hence Joseph as a type of Him had a coat of many colors. So in the forty-fourth psalm we read of the Church: 'Upon your right hand stood the queen in a vesture of gold, wrought about with various colors.' The apostle Peter, too, speaks (of husbands and wives) 'as being heirs together of the manifold grace of God.' In Greek the expression is still more striking, the word used being ποικίλη, that is, 'many-colored.'”