We recently published a book On the Good of Marriage, in which we also reminded and admonished the virgins of Christ that, on account of the excellence of the greater gift which they have divinely received, they should not despise, in comparison with themselves, the fathers and mothers of the people of God, and those men whom the Apostle commends as it were as an olive tree—lest the wild olive grafted in should be proud—men who, by the very propagation of children, were serving Christ who was to come; nor should they judge these to be of inferior merit merely because, by divine right, continence is set above wedlock, and holy virginity above marriage. For in those men things to come were being prepared and brought to birth, things which we now behold being wondrously and effectually fulfilled, and whose very married life was prophetic:
whence not by the custom of human vows and joys, but by the very deep counsel of God, in some of them fruitfulness merited to be honored, in some even barrenness merited to be made fruitful. But in this present time, to those to whom it was said, If they do not contain themselves, let them marry, no exhortation is to be applied, but rather consolation; while those to whom it was said, He that is able to receive it, let him receive it, are to be exhorted, lest they be terrified, and are to be made to fear, lest they be lifted up. Not only, therefore, is virginity to be preached, that it may be loved, but it must also be admonished, lest it be puffed up. This we have undertaken in this discourse; may Christ help us—the Son of a virgin, and the Bridegroom of virgins, bodily born of a virginal womb, spiritually wedded in a virginal union.
Since, therefore, the whole Church herself is a virgin betrothed to one husband, Christ, as the Apostle says, how worthy of honor are those members of hers who keep in the very flesh that which the whole Church keeps in faith—the Church which imitates the mother of her Husband and her Lord! For the Church too is both mother and virgin. For whose integrity do we care, if she is not a virgin? Or whose offspring do we address, if she is not a mother? Mary bodily bore the Head of this body; the Church spiritually bears the members of that Head. In both, virginity does not hinder fruitfulness; in both, fruitfulness does not take away virginity.
Accordingly, since the whole Church is holy both in body and in spirit, and yet is not as a whole a virgin in body, but in spirit, how much holier is she in those members where she is a virgin both in body and in spirit! It is written in the Gospel that when the mother and brethren of Christ—that is, His kinsmen according to the flesh—had been announced to Him and were waiting outside, because they could not approach Him for the crowd, He answered: Who is my mother, or who are my brethren? And stretching out His hand over His disciples, He said: These are my brethren;
and whoever shall do the will of my Father, he is to me brother and mother and sister—teaching us what else but to set our spiritual kinship before the kinship of the flesh, and that men are not thereby blessed if they are joined by fleshly nearness to the just and holy, but if by obeying their teaching and imitating their manners they cleave to them? Mary, therefore, was more blessed in receiving the faith of Christ than in conceiving the flesh of Christ. For to a certain woman who said, Blessed is the womb that bore You, He Himself answered: Yea rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it. Finally, to His brethren—that is, His kinsmen according to the flesh—who did not believe in Him, of what avail was that kinship?
So too the maternal nearness would have profited Mary nothing, had she not more blessedly borne Christ in her heart than in her flesh. Her very virginity also is on that account more pleasing and more acceptable, because Christ, when conceived, did not snatch it away beforehand from a husband who would violate it, that He Himself might preserve it; but before He was conceived He chose her, already dedicated to God, as the one from whom He would be born. This is indicated by the words which Mary returned to the angel announcing to her the offspring. How, she said, shall this be, since I know not a man? Which assuredly she would not have said, unless she had before vowed herself a virgin to God. But because the manners of the Israelites still refused this, she was betrothed to a righteous man, who would not violently take away, but rather guard against the violent, that which she had already vowed.
And yet, even if she had said only, How shall this be? and had not added, since I know not a man, she would surely not have asked how a woman was to bear the son promised to her, if she were about to marry with the intention of conjugal union. She could also have been commanded to remain a virgin, in whom the Son of God should receive the form of a servant by a fitting miracle; but, as an example to virgins that were to be holy, lest she be thought to have had to be a virgin merely because she alone had merited to conceive offspring even without intercourse, she dedicated her virginity to God while she did not yet know what she was to conceive—so that in an earthly and mortal body the imitation of the heavenly life might come about by vow, not by precept; by the love of choosing, not by the necessity of serving.
Thus Christ, by being born of a virgin who, before she knew who was to be born of her, had resolved to remain a virgin, chose rather to approve holy virginity than to command it. And thus, even in the very woman in whom He received the form of a servant, He willed virginity to be free. There is no reason, therefore, why the virgins of God should be saddened that they too, keeping their virginity, cannot be mothers of the flesh; for Him alone could virginity fittingly bring forth, who in His nativity could have no equal. Nevertheless, that childbearing of the one holy virgin is the glory of all holy virgins, and they too, together with Mary, are mothers of Christ, if they do the will of His Father.
For hence Mary too is more laudably and more blessedly the mother of Christ, according to His aforementioned saying: Whoever does the will of my Father who is in heaven, he is to me brother and sister and mother. All these kinships He exhibits spiritually to Himself in the people whom He redeemed: He has as brothers and sisters holy men and holy women, since they are His co-heirs in the heavenly inheritance. His mother is the whole Church, because by the grace of God she herself indeed brings forth His members, that is, His faithful. Likewise His mother is every pious soul doing the will of His Father with most fruitful charity in those whom she travails to bring forth, until He Himself be formed in them.
Mary, therefore, doing the will of God, is bodily only the mother of Christ, but spiritually both His sister and His mother. And on this account that one woman is not only in spirit, but also in body, both mother and virgin. And a mother indeed in spirit—not of our Head, who is the Savior Himself, of whom rather she was spiritually born, since all who believe in Him, among whom she also is, are rightly called sons of the Bridegroom—but plainly the mother of His members, which we are, because she cooperated by charity, that the faithful might be born in the Church, who are the members of that Head; but in body the mother of the very Head.
For it behooved our Head, on account of a signal miracle, to be born according to the flesh of a virgin, whereby He might signify that His members were to be born according to the spirit of the virgin Church. Mary alone, therefore, is in both spirit and body a mother and a virgin, both the mother of Christ and the virgin of Christ; but the Church, in the saints who shall possess the kingdom of God, is indeed in spirit wholly the mother of Christ, wholly the virgin of Christ, yet in body not wholly, but in some she is the virgin of Christ, in some a mother, but not of Christ. For both faithful married women and virgins dedicated to God, by holy manners and by charity out of a pure heart and a good conscience and faith unfeigned, because they do the will of the Father, are spiritually mothers of Christ;
but those who bring forth bodily by conjugal life do not bring forth Christ, but Adam; and therefore they run, that their offspring, imbued with the sacraments, may become members of Christ, since they know what they have brought forth. This I have said, lest perchance conjugal fruitfulness should dare to contend with virginal integrity, and to set forth Mary herself, and to say to the virgins of God: She had in her body two things to be honored, virginity and fruitfulness, because she both remained inviolate and gave birth; and since we could not, either of us, have this whole felicity, we have divided it, that you may be virgins, we may be mothers; let virginity preserved console you for what is lacking in offspring; let integrity lost be compensated to us by the gain of offspring.
This voice of the faithful married women to the holy virgins might in some way be borne with, if they bore Christians in body, so that by this alone the fruitfulness of Mary's flesh, apart from virginity, would be more excellent, namely, that she brought forth the very Head of these members, whereas they brought forth the members of that Head. But now, even if such women should contend with this voice—women who are joined and mingled with men for this only, that they may have children, and think of nothing else concerning their children except that they may gain them for Christ, and do this as soon as they are able—yet Christians are not born of their flesh, but afterward become such, the Church bringing them to birth, through the fact that she is spiritually the mother of the members of Christ, of whom she is also spiritually the virgin.
To which holy childbearing even those mothers cooperate who have not borne Christians in body, that these may become what they know they could not bring forth in body; yet through this they cooperate, wherein they too are virgins and mothers of Christ—namely, in the faith which works through love. No fruitfulness of the flesh, therefore, can be compared even to the virginity of the flesh that is holy. For virginity of the body is not honored because it is virginity, but because it is dedicated to God; and though it be preserved in the flesh, it is nevertheless preserved by the religion and devotion of the spirit. And thus even the virginity of the body is spiritual, which the continence of piety vows and preserves.
For just as no one uses his body unchastely unless wickedness has first been conceived in the spirit, so no one preserves chastity in the body unless chastity has first been implanted in the spirit. And further, if conjugal chastity, though it be guarded in the flesh, is nevertheless attributed to the mind, not to the flesh—the mind being its president and ruler, under whom the flesh itself is mingled with none save its own spouse—how much more, and how much more honorably, is that continence to be numbered among the goods of the mind, by which the integrity of the flesh is vowed, consecrated, and preserved to the very Creator of the soul and of the flesh! Neither, therefore, is the fruitfulness of the flesh of those women—who in this time seek nothing else in marriage than offspring, which they may deliver over to Christ—to be believed capable of being compensated for lost virginity.
For in former times, when Christ was to come according to the flesh, the very race of the flesh was necessary in a certain great and prophetic nation; but now, when from every race of men and from all nations the members of Christ can be gathered to the people of God and the city of the kingdom of heaven, let him who is able to receive holy virginity, receive it, and let only her who does not contain herself, marry. For what? If some rich woman should expend much money upon this good work, so as to buy slaves from diverse nations whom she might make Christians, would she not more richly and more numerously procure the begetting of members of Christ than by any fertility of the womb, however great? Nor even so would she dare to compare her money to the gift of holy virginity.
But if, for the sake of making Christians of those who shall be born, the fruitfulness of the flesh is deservedly to be compensated for lost virginity, this business would be more fruitful if virginity were lost for a great monetary price, whereby many more boys to be made Christians might be bought than would be born from one womb, however fertile. But if this is most foolishly said, let the faithful married women have their own good—concerning which we have discoursed, so far as seemed fit, in another volume—and let them the more honor, as they most rightly have been accustomed to do, in the holy virgins that better good of theirs, concerning which we discourse in this discourse. For neither ought marriages to compare themselves with the merits of the continent even in this respect, that virgins are begotten from them;
for this is not the good of marriage, but of nature, which has been so divinely instituted that, from any human intercourse of both sexes—whether ordered and honorable, or base and unlawful—no female is born except a virgin. Yet no consecrated virgin is born; so it comes about that a virgin is born even from fornication, but a consecrated virgin not even from marriage. Nor do we praise this in virgins, that they are virgins, but that they are virgins dedicated to God by pious continence. For—as I would not rashly say—a married woman seems to me happier than a virgin about to marry; for the former already has what the latter still desires, especially if the latter is not yet even betrothed to anyone. The former studies to please one, to whom she is given; the latter, many, uncertain to whom she is to be given;
by this one thing she defends the chastity of her thought from the crowd, that she seeks in the crowd not an adulterer, but a husband. That virgin, therefore, is deservedly set before the married woman, who neither offers herself to be loved by the multitude, while she seeks the love of one out of the multitude, nor composes herself now to the one found, thinking of the things of the world, how she may please her husband, but has so loved Him who is beautiful in form above the sons of men, that, because she could not conceive Him in the flesh as Mary did, having conceived Him in her heart she keeps her flesh also inviolate. This kind of virgins no bodily fruitfulness has brought forth; this is not the offspring of flesh and blood. If the mother of these is sought, it is the Church.
No one brings forth consecrated virgins except a consecrated virgin, she who was betrothed to be presented as a chaste virgin to one husband, Christ. From her, not wholly a virgin in body, but wholly a virgin in spirit, are born holy virgins both in body and in spirit. Let marriages have their own good—not because they beget children, but because they beget honorably, because lawfully, because chastely, because in fellowship, and rear their begotten children together, healthfully, and diligently; because they mutually keep the fidelity of the marriage bed; because they do not violate the sacrament of wedlock. Yet all these are the gifts of human duty; but virginal integrity, and immunity from all intercourse through pious continence, is an angelic portion, and, in corruptible flesh, a meditation upon perpetual incorruption.
Let all fruitfulness of the flesh, all conjugal chastity, yield to this: the former is not within our own power, the latter is not in eternity; fruitfulness of the flesh has no free will, conjugal chastity has no place in heaven. Assuredly they will have something great above the rest in that common immortality, who have in the flesh something already not of the flesh. Whence they are wondrously foolish who think the good of this continence not to be necessary for the sake of the kingdom of heaven, but for the sake of the present age—namely, because marriages are stretched out with more and closer earthly cares, from which annoyance virgins and the continent are free:
Let all fruitfulness of the flesh, all conjugal chastity, yield to this. The one is not in our power, the other is not in eternity: carnal fruitfulness hath not free choice, conjugal chastity hath not heaven. Assuredly they shall have something great above the rest in that common immortality, who have already in the flesh something that is not of the flesh. Wherefore they are marvellously foolish who think that the good of this continence is necessary not for the kingdom of heaven but for the present world — namely, because marriages are stretched by more and closer earthly cares, from which trouble virgins and the continent are free:
As though it were better not to marry only for this reason, that the straits of the present time might be eased, and not because it profits anything for the age to come. And lest they should seem to have put forward this empty opinion out of the vanity proper to their own heart, they bring in a testimony from the Apostle, where he says: 'Concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord, but I give counsel, as one that has obtained mercy of God to be faithful. I suppose therefore that this is good for the present necessity, for it is good for a man so to be.' Behold, they say, where the Apostle makes plain that this is good on account of the present necessity, not on account of the eternity to come.
As if the Apostle would take account of a present necessity, except in providing for and taking counsel for the future, seeing that his whole dispensation calls to nothing but life eternal. It is therefore a present necessity that is to be shunned, yet one which nevertheless hinders some of the goods to come: by which necessity the married life is compelled to think upon the things of the world, how a man may please his wife or a wife her husband — not that these separate them from the kingdom of God, as sins do, which for that reason are restrained by commandment and not by counsel, because to disobey the Lord who commands is damnable; but that which might be possessed more fully within that very kingdom of God, if one thought more fully how God should be pleased, will surely be less, since this very thing is thought upon less because of the necessity of marriage.
For this reason he says, 'Concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord'; for whoever does not obey a commandment is guilty and liable to punishment. Accordingly, since to take a wife or to marry is not a sin — for if it were a sin, it would be forbidden by a commandment — therefore there is no commandment of the Lord concerning virgins. But since, when sins have been avoided or remitted, eternal life is to be approached, in which there is a certain surpassing glory to be granted not to all who shall live for ever, but to certain ones there; and to attain it, it is too little to have been freed from sins, unless something be also vowed to the Deliverer himself — something which it is no crime not to have vowed, but to have vowed it and paid it is praiseworthy — for this reason he says, 'I give counsel, as one that has obtained mercy of God to be faithful';
for neither ought I to grudge faithful counsel, I who am faithful not by my own merits, but by the mercy of God. 'I suppose therefore that this is good for the present necessity.' This, he says, concerning which I have no commandment of the Lord, but give counsel — this it is: I suppose that concerning virgins it is good, on account of the present necessity. For I know what the necessity of the present time, which marriages serve, compels — namely, that the things which are God's are thought upon less than suffices for the attaining of that glory which will not belong to all, however much they abide in eternal life and salvation; 'for star differs from star in glory; so also is the resurrection of the dead.' It is good, then, for a man so to be. Then the same Apostle adds and says: 'Art thou bound to a wife?
seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife.' Of these two things, the first which he laid down pertains to a commandment, against which it is not lawful to act. For it is not lawful to put away a wife except for the cause of fornication, as the Lord himself says in the Gospel. But that which he added, 'Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife,' is a sentence of counsel, not of commandment; it is therefore lawful to do it, but better not to do it. Accordingly he immediately subjoined: 'And if thou take a wife, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she has not sinned.' But when he had earlier said, 'Art thou bound to a wife? seek not to be loosed,' did he add, 'And if thou be loosed, thou hast not sinned'? For he had already said above:
'But to those who are in wedlock I command, not I, but the Lord, that a wife depart not from her husband; but if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband' — for it can happen that she depart not through her own fault, but her husband's. Then he says: 'And let not a husband put away his wife,' which likewise he set down according to the commandment of the Lord, nor did he there add: 'And if he put her away, he does not sin.' For this is a commandment, to disobey which is sin, not a counsel, by which, if you are unwilling to make use of it, you attain less of good, but perpetrate nothing of evil. Therefore, when he had said, 'Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife,' since he was not commanding lest an evil be done, but counselling that a better be done, he immediately subjoined: 'And if thou take a wife, thou hast not sinned;
and if a virgin marry, she has not sinned.' Yet he added: 'But such shall have tribulation of the flesh; but I spare you' — thus exhorting to virginity and to perpetual continence, so as even to deter a little from marriage, modestly indeed, not as from a thing evil and unlawful, but as from a thing burdensome and troublesome. For it is one thing to admit the baseness of the flesh, another to have the tribulation of the flesh: the former is to commit a crime, the latter is to endure a toil, which for the most part men do not refuse even for the most honourable duties.
But to take upon oneself, for the sake of having a marriage in this present time — a time in which Christ, being now already come, is no longer served by the propagation of his own offspring through the succession of the flesh — that tribulation of the flesh which the Apostle foretells to those about to marry, and to endure it: this would be exceedingly foolish, were it not that it is feared for the incontinent, lest, Satan tempting them, they should fall into damnable sins. But as to his saying that he spares those whom he declares will have tribulation of the flesh, nothing sounder occurs to me for the present than this: that he did not wish to open up and unfold in words that same tribulation of the flesh which he foretold to those who choose marriage — a tribulation found in the suspicions of conjugal jealousy, in the begetting and rearing of children, in the fears and griefs of bereavement.
For how few there are who, when they have bound themselves with the bonds of wedlock, are not dragged and tossed about by these affections? Which affections we ourselves ought not to exaggerate, lest we fail to spare those very persons whom the Apostle judged were to be spared. Only by this which I have briefly set down was it necessary that the reader be made cautious against those who, in this which is written — 'But such shall have tribulation of the flesh; but I spare you' — slander marriage: as though that saying had condemned marriages obliquely; as though he had been unwilling to speak the condemnation itself when he said, 'But I spare you,' so that, forsooth, while he spares these, he had not spared his own soul, if by lying he said, 'And if thou take a wife, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she has not sinned.'
And those who believe this concerning holy Scripture, or wish it to be believed, are as it were paving a way for themselves to a license of lying, or to the defence of their own perverse opinion, wherever they hold anything other than what sound doctrine requires. For if anything plain be brought forward from the divine books whereby their errors are refuted, they have this ready at hand like a shield, whereby, as though defending themselves against the truth, they lay themselves bare to be wounded by the devil: so that they say the author of the book did not speak the truth — now, that he might spare the weak; now, that he might terrify the scornful — according as a cause presents itself whereby their perverse opinion may be defended.
And thus, while they prefer to defend rather than to correct the things which they opine, they attempt to break the authority of the holy Scriptures, by which alone all proud and hard necks are broken. Wherefore I admonish the followers, both men and women, of perpetual continence and of sacred virginity, that they so prefer their good to marriage as not to judge marriage an evil, and that they know it was said by the Apostle not deceitfully but plainly and truly: 'He that gives in marriage does well; and he that gives not in marriage does better. And if thou take a wife, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she has not sinned.' And a little after: 'But she shall be more blessed if she so remain, according to my judgment.' And lest it should be thought a human judgment, he adds: 'And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.'
This is the Lord's, this is the apostolic, this is the true, this is the sound doctrine: so to choose the greater gifts that the lesser be not condemned. Better in the Scripture of God is the truth of God than in anyone's mind or flesh the virginity of man. Let that which is chaste be so loved, that that which is true be not denied. For what evil can they not think even concerning their own flesh, who believe that the apostolic tongue, in that very place where it was commending the virginity of the body, was not virgin from the corruption of a lie? First, therefore, and above all, let those who choose the good of virginity hold most firmly that the holy Scriptures have lied in nothing, and thereby that this too is true which was said: 'And if thou take a wife, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she has not sinned.'
Nor let them think that so great a good of integrity is diminished if marriage be not an evil. Nay rather, let her the more confidently trust that from this a palm of greater glory has been prepared for her — she who feared not to be condemned if she should marry, but to be more honourably crowned because she would not marry. She has desired it. Let those, therefore, who have wished to remain without wedlock flee marriage not as a pit of sin, but pass over it as a hill of a lesser good, that they may rest upon the mountain of the greater continence. For that hill is inhabited under this law, that one may not migrate from it when one wills; 'for a woman is bound so long as her husband lives.' Nevertheless, one ascends from it, as by a step, to the continence of widowhood;
but for the sake of virginal continence, one must either turn aside from it by not consenting to suitors, or leap over it by anticipating suitors. But lest anyone should think that of the two works, the good and the better, the rewards would be equal, it was necessary for this reason to argue against those who so interpreted what the Apostle says — 'I suppose therefore that this is good for the present necessity' — as to say that virginity is useful not for the kingdom of heaven, but for the present age; as though in that eternal life those who had chosen this better part would have nothing more than the rest. And in this discussion, when we came to that which the same Apostle says:
'But such shall have tribulation of the flesh; but I spare you,' we ran into other disputants, who did not make marriage equal to perpetual continence, but condemned it altogether. For since either error exists — whether to make marriage equal to holy virginity, or to condemn it — these two errors, by fleeing each other too much, clash front to front, because they were unwilling to hold the middle course of truth: whereby, both by sure reasoning and by the authority of the holy Scriptures, we find that neither is marriage a sin, nor do we make it equal to the good either of virginal or even of widowed continence. For some, in their desire for virginity, thought that marriage was to be detested like adultery;