On Virginity 1 part 2/5

I pass over the jealousies and quarrels—whether arising from real events or from mere suspicions—and into what passions and calamities they come to an end.

...such is human life, full of these evils. Do not bring up to me the old tales, which furnished the tragic poets with their plots.

For those are considered myths on account of the excess of their monstrousness—stories containing child-murders, child-eating, the killing of husbands, matricides, the slaughter of brothers, unlawful unions, and every kind of confusion of nature—which those who narrate the ancient tales, beginning their narration from marriages, bring to such calamities.

But leaving all those aside, behold on the present stage of life the tragedies within it, of which marriage becomes the impresario for mankind.

Come to the courts, read the laws concerning these matters.

There you will witness the unspeakable secrets of marriages.

For just as, when you hear physicians recounting the various diseases, you learn the wretchedness of the human body, being taught of what sort and how many evils it is susceptible—so likewise, when you encounter the laws and come to know the manifold transgressions of marriage, against which they prescribe punishments, you are precisely taught the peculiar properties of marriage itself.

For neither does a physician treat diseases that do not exist, nor does a law punish evils that do not occur.

Chapter 4: That all the improprieties of life have their origin in marriage;

and in it also [is shown] what sort of man he truly is who has renounced life.

Thus the truth of this argument will be made manifest to us:

he who, with the pure eye of the soul, has perceived the deceitfulness of this life, and has risen above the things eagerly pursued here, and who, as the Apostle says, regards all things as so much foul-smelling refuse, and who has in a manner exiled himself from the whole of life through withdrawal from marriage, has no fellowship with the evils of mankind—I mean covetousness, envy, wrath, hatred, desire for empty glory, and all the other things of that kind.

And having exemption from all such things, being free through everything, and living at peace, he has nothing over which he would strive for more, nor anything by which he would stir up envy against himself among his neighbors—he who touches none of the things by which envy takes root in life. For having lifted his own soul above the whole world, and reckoning virtue alone his precious possession, he will live a life free from grief, peaceable, and without strife.

For the possession of virtue, even if all men partake of it, each according to his own capacity, is always complete for those who desire it—unlike possession on earth, where those who divide it into portions, whatever they add to the one share, take away just so much from the other, and the increase of the one is the diminishing of the one who shares with him.

Whence also the battles concerning having more arise among men on account of the hatred of being diminished.

But the abundance of that possession is free from envy, and he who has seized the greater share brings no loss to the one who claims an equal share; rather, to whatever extent each is capable of receiving, he is himself filled with the good desire, while the wealth of the virtues is not exhausted among those who received it before him.

He, then, who looks toward such a life, and treasures up for himself virtue, which no human boundary can circumscribe—will he ever consent to incline his own soul toward any of the lowly and trodden-down things? Will he admire earthly wealth, or human power, or anything else of the things eagerly pursued through folly? For if someone is still disposed basely toward these things, he would be outside such a company, and would have nothing to do with our present argument;

but if he minds the things above and journeys aloft together with God, he is altogether higher than such things, not having the common occasion of error concerning them—I mean marriage.

For the wanting to be above others—this grievous passion, pride, which one would not err in calling the seed, or rather the root, of every thorn of sin—this especially has its origin from the cause of marriage.

For it is generally the case that the covetous man blames his children [for his greed], or that the man mad for glory and fond of honor attributes the cause of his fault to his lineage—so that he might not seem inferior to those who lived before him, and might be reckoned great by those who come after, leaving to his offspring some tale to tell;

and likewise all the other maladies of the soul—envy, the harboring of grudges, hatred, and whatever else of that kind—depend upon the very same cause.

For all these dwell together as fellow-citizens with those who are agitated about this life; and he who has come to be outside them, as though surveying human passions from afar as from some lofty watchtower, pities for their blindness those who are enslaved to such vanity and who judge the prosperity of the flesh to be a great thing.

For whenever he sees some man conspicuous in worldly affairs, glorying in honors, riches, or powers, he laughs at the folly of those who are puffed up on account of these things, and he reckons the utmost span of human life according to the limit declared by the psalmist.

Then, measuring this momentary span against the ages without end, he pities the vanity of the one who exalts his soul over things so paltry, lowly, and transient.

Or [what good is] the possession of many acres of land? To what good end does this come for those who have acquired it, except that the foolish man supposes to be his own that which in no way belongs to him? For he is ignorant, it seems, on account of his great greed, that the earth truly belongs to the Lord, and the fullness thereof—for God is king of all the earth—while for men, the passion of covetousness gives the false title of ownership to things that in no way belong to them.

For the earth, as the wise Ecclesiast says, stands forever, serving all generations, and nourishing at different times the different people who come to be upon it;

but men, not even being masters of themselves, but coming into life according to the will of him who leads them, at a time they do not know, and departing from it again when they do not wish—through great vanity suppose themselves to be its masters, though they come to be and perish according to their appointed times, while it forever remains.

For truly they live in darkness, those who sojourn in this life together with these dwelling-tents [bodies].

Wherefore the prophet, groaning over the prolongation of his sojourning, says: 'Woe is me, that my sojourning is prolonged!' And he attributed the cause of this dejection to darkness.

For we have learned from the learned that darkness is called 'Kedar' in the Hebrew tongue.

Is it not truly the case that, as though gripped by a kind of nocturnal blindness, men grow dim-sighted toward the recognition of this deceit, not knowing that all things reckoned precious in this life, or whatever is supposed to be the contrary, subsist only in the opinion of the foolish? In themselves they are, in truth, nothing at all—

neither lowly birth, nor renown of lineage, nor glory, nor eminence, nor the old tales, nor the pride felt over present circumstances, nor the ruling over others, nor being subject to another.

Riches and luxuries, poverty and want, and all the inequalities of life, seem to differ vastly to the uneducated, whenever they make pleasure their criterion for such things;

but to one lofty in mind, all things appear of equal worth, and neither is more preferable than the other, since the course of life is run equally through opposites, and there exists in either lot an equal capacity for living well or ill—'through the weapons of the right hand and of the left,' as the Apostle says, 'through glory and dishonor.'

For it is customary for travelers to press on equally toward the end of the road, whether they pass through meadows and fertile places, or through more desolate and rugged terrain, and neither does the pleasant detain them, nor the unpleasant hinder them.

So too he himself will press on unswervingly toward the goal set before him, turning aside toward none of the things along the way, but, looking only toward heaven, will pass through life, just as some good pilot steers his vessel toward the mark above.

But the man who is dull in mind, looking downward, bowed down in soul toward the pleasures of the body as cattle toward pasture, living for the belly alone and the things after the belly, estranged from the life of God and a stranger to the covenants of promise, thinking no other thing good except to take pleasure through the body—

this man, and everyone like him, is he who walks in darkness, as Scripture says, the inventor of the evils in this life;

for in these are covetousness, licentiousness of the passions, immoderation toward pleasures, every lust for power, desire for empty glory, and the rest of the throng of passions that dwell together with mankind.

For among evils, the one somehow clings to the other, and wherever the one arrives, the rest also, as though drawn by some natural necessity, altogether enter along with it—just as happens in a chain, when its first link is pulled;

...the links of the chain—yet the link at the far end of the chain moves together with the first, always following in due sequence, the motion proceeding continuously from the first through those adjacent to it.

Thus the human passions are interwoven and grown together with one another, and through the one that prevails, the whole remaining train of evils enters together into the soul.

And if I must sketch out for you this wicked chain, suppose that someone, through some pleasure, is overcome by the passion of vainglory;

but along with vainglory, the desire for more also followed.

For it is not possible to become covetous, unless that [vainglory] leads one by the hand into the passion.

Then the desire to have more and to be preeminent kindles either wrath toward one's equal, or arrogance toward one's inferior, or envy toward one's superior; and hypocrisy becomes the follower of envy, bitterness the follower of hypocrisy, and misanthropy the follower of bitterness; and the end of all these is condemnation, terminating in Gehenna, darkness, and fire.

Do you see the train of evils, how everything hangs from that one passion of pleasure? Since, then, once the succession of such passions has entered into life, we see, from the counsel of the divinely-inspired Scriptures, but one way out of these: to be separated from such a life, which has bound to itself the following-on of griefs.

For it is not possible for one who has lingered fondly in Sodom to escape the downpour of fire; nor for one who has come to be outside Sodom, and then turned back again toward its desolation, to avoid being fixed as a pillar of salt; nor indeed will he be delivered from the slavery of the Egyptians who has not left Egypt—I mean this submerged life—and crossed, not that Red Sea, but this black and gloomy sea of life.

But if, as the Lord says, unless the truth sets us free, we remain in the evil of slavery, how is it possible for the one who seeks falsehood, and who conducts himself amid the error of life, to come to be in the truth? And how will one who has surrendered his own life as subject to the necessities of nature escape this slavery? This argument would become clearer to us by way of some example.

Just as some river, made turbulent by wintry torrents, and carried along according to its own nature, sweeping up in its current logs and stones and everything it happens upon, is treacherous and dangerous only to those caught within it, while it flows harmlessly for those who keep themselves far off from it—so too the turbulence of life is suffered, and its passions taken up against oneself, only by the one who has come to be within it: passions which nature, flowing in accordance with itself, necessarily brings upon those who journey through it, overwhelming them with the evils of life.

But if one should leave this torrent, as Scripture says, and its irresistible water, he will altogether be outside, according to the sequence of the song, the hunter's snare with its teeth set for the life of this world, having, like a sparrow, flown past the trap upon the wing of virtue.

For since, according to the example we have spoken of the torrent, human life is always borne along, overflowing with disturbances and irregularities of every kind, pouring itself down the steep slope of nature, and nothing among the things eagerly pursued within it stands still, nor does it wait for the satisfaction of those who desire it, but everything that befalls it approaches and, having barely touched us, rushes on past, and even the ever-present moment escapes perception through the very violence of its passing, our eyes being swept along by the flow that comes rushing from behind—

for this reason, it would be profitable to hold ourselves far from such a current, lest, being caught up in things unstable, we should come to neglect the things that ever stand firm.

...can any who cling passionately to something in this life expect to possess forever the thing desired? What among the things most eagerly pursued ever remains the same? What bloom of youth? What good fortune of strength or beauty? What wealth? What glory? What power? Do not all such things, having flourished for a brief while, flow away again and pass over into their very opposite designation? Who has lived his whole life through in youth? For whom has strength endured to the very end? And has not nature made the flower of beauty even more short-lived than the very flowers that appear in spring? For these, when their season comes round, sprout forth, and having faded after a little while, blossom again, and fade again, and put forth their foliage again, and display the very same beauty again the following year.

But the human flower, having been shown by nature but once, in the springtime of youth, was then extinguished, made to vanish in the winter of old age.

Likewise, all the other things too, having for a time deceived the perception of the flesh, then passed away and were covered over with forgetfulness.

Since, then, such changes, occurring by a certain necessity of nature, altogether grieve the one who has become attached to them, one escape from such evils is this: that nothing subject to change be allowed to attach itself to the soul; but rather, insofar as it is possible, to be separated from association with the whole of the passionate and fleshly life—or rather, to come to be outside even of sympathy for one's own body—so that, not living according to the flesh, one may not become liable to the misfortunes that arise from the flesh.

And this is to live by the soul alone, and to imitate, as far as possible, the manner of life of the incorporeal powers, among whom they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but their work, their pursuit, and their achievement is to behold the Father of incorruption, and to adorn their own form after the archetypal beauty, through whatever imitation is attainable.

We say, then, that virginity has been given to man as a co-worker and, as Scripture seems to hold, a helper for this understanding and this lofty desire.

And just as, for the other pursuits, certain arts have been devised for the accomplishment of each thing sought, so it seems to me that the practice of virginity too is a certain art and power of the more divine life, teaching those who live in the flesh to become like the incorporeal nature.

Chapter 5: That the dispassion of the soul must precede the purity of the body.

For the whole endeavor of such a life is this: that the loftiness of the soul not be brought low through the uprising of the pleasures, and that, instead of journeying aloft and looking to the things above, our understanding not fall, being borne down toward the passions of flesh and blood.

For how can the soul that has been nailed down below to the pleasure of the flesh, and has occupied its desire with human passions, still look up with a free eye toward the kindred and intelligible light, when it has turned its inclination toward material things out of some depraved and uneducated preconception? For just as the eyes of swine, turned downward by nature, have no experience of the wonders of heaven, so too the soul that has been dragged down together with the body will no longer be able to look toward heaven and the beauties above, but will bow itself toward the lowly, beast-like part of its nature.

but [the soul rightly ordered] will transfer its power of love from bodily things to the intelligible and immaterial contemplation of the Beautiful.

For such a disposition of the soul, then, the virginity of the body was devised for us, so that it might especially produce in the soul forgetfulness and oblivion of the passionate movements of nature, imposing upon it no necessity of being occupied with the lowly obligations of the flesh.

For having once been freed from such debts, the soul no longer runs the risk that, through gradual habituation to what seems permitted by some law of nature, it might come, in aversion and ignorance, to be deprived of that divine and undefiled pleasure, which purity of heart alone is by nature fitted to capture for the ruling faculty within us.

Chapter 6: That Elijah and John took diligent care for the exactness of this manner of life.

For both of them, straightway from their youth, were estranged from human life, and set themselves, as it were, outside nature, both by their disdain in matters of eating and drinking for customary and habitual food, and by their manner of living in the desert — so that their hearing was kept unassailed by noise, their sight preserved from wandering distraction, and their taste remained simple and unelaborated, since for each of them their need was satisfied from whatever came to hand.

From this they came into much fair weather and calm away from external tumults, and for this reason they were raised up to such a greatness of divine gifts as the account records concerning each of the two.

For Elijah, having become, as it were, a steward of God's gifts, was lord, by authority, both to shut up the benefits from heaven against sinners and to release them again for those who repented;

but of John the divine history says he wrought no such wonder at all, yet the grace within him was testified — more than in every prophet — by him who sees hidden things;

perhaps because, pure and unmixed with any material attachment, they dedicated their own desire from beginning to end to the Lord, occupying themselves neither with affection for children, nor with care for wives, nor with any other human concern;

who indeed, not even deeming it fitting for themselves to have concern for daily necessary food, and having shown themselves superior to solicitude for dignity of clothing, improvised their needs from whatever they chanced upon — one covered with goatskins, the other with camel's hair — would not, I think, have arrived at that greatness, had they been softened by the bodily pleasures under marriage.

But these things were not written idly, but, as the Apostle says, have been recorded for our admonition, that we might direct our own life toward theirs.

What then do we learn from these things? That, in likeness to those holy men, the one who desires to be joined to God should occupy his mind with none of the affairs of life.

For it is not possible for the one whose mind is dispersed among many things to travel straight toward the contemplation and desire of God.

Let us suppose that some water, poured forth from a spring, is split, as it happens, into different outflows.

So then, as long as it is borne in this way, it will be fit for none of the uses useful for agriculture, since the diffusion into many streams makes the water in each one scant, feeble, and hard to move through want of force;

but if someone should gather together all its disorderly outflows and collect into one channel what had until then been scattered abroad in many directions, he could put the water, now massed and concentrated, to many beneficial and useful purposes for life.

So it seems to me the human mind also is: if it should be poured out everywhere, ever flowing and scattering toward whatever pleases the senses, it would possess no power worth mentioning for the journey toward the truly good;

but if, recalled from every side and gathered about itself, concentrated and undispersed, it should move toward its own proper and natural activity, there will be nothing to hinder it from being borne upward and laying hold of the truth of the things that are.

For just as water enclosed in a pipe is often borne upright, upward, by the force compressing it, having nowhere to be diffused — even though its natural motion is downward — so also the human mind, as though girded on every side by the narrow pipe of self-control, will somehow be taken up, by the very nature of its being in motion, toward the desire of things on high, having no place to flow aside.

For that which is ever-moving, having received its nature from its Maker, can never come to a stop; and being prevented from spending its motion on vain things, it is impossible for it not to travel altogether straight toward the truth, since it is everywhere barred from what is absurd.

And indeed, on roads with many branches, it is especially thus that we see travelers not erring from the straight way, whenever, having learned beforehand the wandering that lies on the other roads, they turn away from them.

Just as, then, the traveler on wandering paths, having turned back in his journeying, keeps himself upon the straight one, so our mind, by turning away from vain things, will come to know the truth that is among the things that are.

The memory of those great prophets seems, then, to teach us this: to entangle ourselves with none of the things pursued in this world — and marriage is one of the things pursued, or rather it is the beginning and root of the pursuit of vain things.

Chapter 7: That marriage too is not among the things condemned.

But let no one, on account of these words, suppose that we set aside the dispensation of marriage;

for we are not ignorant that marriage too has not been estranged from the blessing of God; but since a sufficient advocate for it is the common nature of human beings itself, which of its own accord implants in all who proceed through marriage toward generation an inclination toward such things, while virginity somehow runs contrary to nature, it would be superfluous to compose laboriously an exhortation and encouragement on behalf of marriage, putting forward as its hard-to-oppose advocate pleasure, I mean — except perhaps that, on account of those who falsify the doctrines of the Church, there might be need of such words: those whom the Apostle names as having their own conscience cauterized, because, having abandoned the guidance of the Spirit through the teaching of demons, they engrave certain scars and brand-marks upon their own hearts, abominating the creatures of God as pollutions, as bringing to evil, as causes of evils, and calling them by such names.

'...for me to judge those outside?' says he who spoke it.

For truly those men are outside the court of the Word's mysteries, dwelling not under the shelter of God but in the fold of the evil one — men taken captive to his will, according to the Apostle's word — and for this reason they do not understand that, since every virtue is contemplated as a mean, deviation toward either extreme is vice;

for wherever there is deficiency and excess, whoever has grasped the mean between them has thereby distinguished virtue from vice.

The argument would become clearer to us if it were shown in the very facts themselves.

Again, the pious man is neither an atheist nor superstitious;

for the impiety is equal in both cases — thinking that there is no god, and thinking that there are many.

Do you wish also, through other examples, to recognize the doctrine? He who has fled from being both miserly and prodigal has, by withdrawing from these opposite passions, rightly established freedom in his character;

for freedom is something of this sort: neither to be disposed at random toward immoderate and unprofitable expenditures, nor to be miserly toward what is necessary.

So too in all the rest — that we may not go through each case one by one — reason has made known virtue as the mean between opposites.

Chastity, therefore, is also a mean, and it has manifest deviations toward vice on either side;

for the one who is deficient in the vigor of his soul, and becomes easily overcome by the passion of pleasure, and for this reason has not even approached the path of a pure and chaste life, has slipped down into the passions of dishonor;

but the one who has gone beyond the passable ground of chastity and overshot the mean of virtue has been carried down, as it were into a precipice, by the teaching of demons, cauterizing, as the Apostle says, his own conscience.

For in defining marriage as detestable, he brands himself with the reproaches of marriage;

for if the tree is bad, as the Gospel somewhere says, the fruit too is altogether worthy of the tree.

If then man is the offshoot and fruit of the plant that is marriage, the reproaches against marriage fall altogether upon the one who utters them.

But those men, branded in conscience and scarred over by the absurdity of their doctrine, are convicted through such arguments.

But we hold this view also concerning marriage: that zeal and desire for divine things ought to take precedence, while the ministry of marriage should not be despised for one who is able to make use of it with chastity and moderation.

Such was the patriarch Isaac, who did not, in the prime of his life — lest marriage become the work of passion — but only after his youth had already been spent, received Rebecca into cohabitation, for the sake of the blessing upon God's seed; and having served marriage only up to a single childbirth, he was again wholly given to the invisible things, having closed his bodily senses;

for this, it seems to me, is what the history signifies in relating the heaviness of the patriarch's eyes.

Chapter 8: That it is difficult for the one who is divided in soul among many things to attain the goal.

But let these matters stand as they seem to those skilled in discerning such things;

let us proceed to what follows in our argument.

...of nature, and slandering as detestable that which is precious.

For just as, in the example we gave earlier concerning water and the spring, whenever a farmer, channeling water onto some plot of land, has also in the meantime some need for a small outflow, he will let only so much flow aside as is proportionate to the need seeking it, so that it may again easily be mingled back with the stream;

but if he should open the outflow to the water without limit and without husbanding it, he will risk that the whole, abandoning the straight course, be entirely gullied out to the side — in the same manner, since life too has need of succession from one generation to another, if someone should make use of what occurs in such a way as to let the spiritual things take precedence and to employ, with sparing and restraint, his desire for such matters, on account of the shortness of the time, this man would be the prudent farmer who farms himself with wisdom, according to the Apostle's precept — not always being petty about the repayment of those cold debts, but setting apart the purity that comes by mutual consent for the leisure of prayer, fearing lest through such attachment he become wholly flesh and blood, in which the Spirit of God does not abide;

but the one who is so weakly disposed that he cannot stand manfully against the drive of nature would do better to keep himself far from such things than to descend into a contest greater than his strength.