Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
The Apostle resolves five questions of the Corinthians concerning marriage. He responds to the questions of the Corinthians concerning the law of marriage, and the counsel of virginity and celibacy. The first question is whether it is lawful for a Christian, as one already reborn and sanctified, to enter into marriage and use it. Paul answers that it is lawful, indeed that the debt must be rendered to a spouse who requests it: "Let the husband render the debt to his wife, and the wife to her husband"; and so it is better to marry than to burn.
The second, at verse 10, concerns divorce: whether divorce is permitted. Paul answers in the negative.
The third, at verse 12: What if a believer has an unbelieving spouse — may she remain and dwell with him? He answers that she may, indeed must, provided the unbeliever consents to dwell peacefully with the believer.
The fourth, at verse 17: Whether on account of Christianity one's state must be changed — so that, for example, a spouse who was a slave in paganism becomes free through Christianity, or one who was a Gentile becomes a Jew. He answers in the negative, and so each must remain in his own state.
The fifth, at verse 25: Whether at least those who are converted to Christ as virgins ought to remain virgins. He answers that virginity is not commanded to anyone, but is counselled to all, as being better than marriage for six reasons.
The first is on account of the necessity of the present time, which is given to us briefly for acquiring gains — not temporal but eternal — and it is on these that the virgin wholly concentrates (verse 26).
The second, at verse 27: because the married man is bound to his wife by marriage as by a chain, while the celibate is loosed and free.
The third, at verse 28: because the celibate lacks the tribulation of the flesh which is in marriage.
The fourth, at verse 32: because the virgin thinks only of how to please God, while the married man has his heart and care divided between his wife and God.
The fifth, at verse 34: because the virgin is holy in both body and spirit, while the married person often is neither in body nor spirit.
The sixth, at verse 35: because celibacy affords the virgin the means of beseeching the Lord without impediment, whereas the married person has a thousand impediments to devotion and piety.
Vulgate Text: 1 Corinthians 7:1-40
1. Now concerning the things whereof you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman; 2. but for fear of fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. 3. Let the husband render the debt to his wife: and the wife also in like manner to the husband. 4. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband. And in like manner the husband also hath not power of his own body, but the wife. 5. Defraud not one another, except, perhaps, by consent, for a time, that you may give yourselves to prayer; and return together again, lest Satan tempt you for your incontinency. 6. But I speak this by indulgence, not by commandment. 7. For I would that all men were even as myself: but every one hath his proper gift from God; one after this manner, and another after that. 8. But I say to the unmarried, and to the widows: It is good for them if they so continue, even as I. 9. But if they do not contain themselves, let them marry. For it is better to marry than to be burnt. 10. But to them that are married, not I but the Lord commandeth, that the wife depart not from her husband. 11. And if she depart, that she remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband. And let not the husband put away his wife. 12. For to the rest I speak, not the Lord. If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she consent to dwell with him, let him not put her away. 13. And if any woman hath a husband that believeth not, and he consent to dwell with her, let her not put away her husband. 14. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife; and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the believing husband: otherwise your children should be unclean; but now they are holy. 15. But if the unbeliever depart, let him depart. For a brother or sister is not under servitude in such cases. But God hath called us in peace. 16. For how knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? Or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife? 17. But as the Lord hath distributed to every one, as God hath called every one, so let him walk: and so in all churches I teach. 18. Is any man called, being circumcised? let him not procure uncircumcision. Is any man called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised. 19. Circumcision is nothing, and uncircumcision is nothing: but the observance of the commandments of God. 20. Let every man abide in the same calling in which he was called. 21. Wast thou called, being a bondman? care not for it; but if thou mayest be made free, use it rather. 22. For he that is called in the Lord, being a bondman, is the freeman of the Lord. Likewise he that is called, being free, is the bondman of Christ. 23. You are bought with a price; be not made the bondslaves of men. 24. Brethren, let every man, wherein he was called, therein abide with God. 25. Now concerning virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord; but I give counsel, as having obtained mercy of the Lord, to be faithful. 26. I think therefore that this is good for the present necessity, that it is good for a man so to be. 27. Art thou bound to a wife? seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? seek not a wife. 28. But if thou take a wife, thou hast not sinned. And if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned: nevertheless, such shall have tribulation of the flesh. But I spare you. 29. This therefore I say, brethren: the time is short; it remaineth, that they also who have wives, be as if they had none; 30. and they that weep, as though they wept not; and they that rejoice, as if they rejoiced not; and they that buy, as though they possessed not; 31. and they that use this world, as if they used it not: for the fashion of this world passeth away. 32. But I would have you to be without solicitude. He that is without a wife, is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. 33. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and he is divided. 34. And the unmarried woman and the virgin thinketh on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. But she that is married thinketh on the things of the world, how she may please her husband. 35. And this I speak for your profit: not to cast a snare upon you; but for that which is decent, and which may give you power to attend upon the Lord, without impediment. 36. But if any man think that he seemeth dishonoured, with regard to his virgin, for that she is above the age, and it must so be: let him do what he will; he sinneth not, if she marry. 37. For he that hath determined being steadfast in his heart, having no necessity, but having power of his own will; and hath judged this in his heart, to keep his virgin, doth well. 38. Therefore, both he that giveth his virgin in marriage, doth well; and he that giveth her not, doth better. 39. A woman is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband die, she is at liberty: let her marry to whom she will; only in the Lord. 40. But more blessed shall she be, if she so remain, according to my counsel; and I think that I also have the Spirit of God.
Verse 1: Now Concerning the Things Whereof You Wrote to Me
1. Now concerning the things whereof you wrote to me. — As if to say: As regards the questions which you have put to me concerning the law, use, and fruit of marriage and celibacy, I answer thus: "It is good for a man not to touch a woman." Here note, from St. Anselm and St. Ambrose, that certain pseudo-apostles, in order to seem holier, taught that marriage was to be despised, and this from the words of Christ, Matthew 19:12: "There are eunuchs who have made themselves so for the kingdom of heaven" — which they interpreted as having been said of all Christians, especially since the act of fornication, which the Apostle so vehemently censured in the preceding chapter, does not seem to differ much, indeed is physically the same, as the act of marriage. The Corinthians therefore inquired by letter of Paul whether Christians ought to be so holy, and so given to prayer, piety, and chastity, as to be compelled to abstain entirely from conjugal relations, even those who were married.
It Is Good for a Man Not to Touch a Woman. — "Good," in Greek καλόν, that is, beautiful, an excellent and outstanding thing. Thus Theophylact. "Good" therefore is not here the same as useful or convenient, as Erasmus translates; but it is a moral and spiritual good, which of itself contributes to victory over concupiscence, to piety and salvation, as is clear from verses 32, 34, 35. Again, "to touch," or "to know," a woman among the Hebrews speaking modestly and decently is the same as to perform the act of marriage. St. Jerome adds, in Book I Against Jovinian, that the Apostle says "to touch," because the very touch of a woman is, as it were, contagious and to be fled by a man. Hear St. Jerome: "The Apostle does not say: It is good not to have a wife; but, It is good not to touch a woman, as though there were danger even in the touch — that he who has touched her shall not escape — namely a thing which seizes the precious souls of men and causes the hearts of young men to fly away. Can a man bind fire in his bosom and not be burned? or shall he walk upon coals of fire and not be burned? Therefore, just as he who has touched fire is at once burned, so the touch of a man perceives its own nature in a woman and understands the diversity of sex. The fables of the Gentiles also tell that Mithras and Erichthonius were generated, either in stone or in earth, from the heat of lust alone. Hence too our Joseph, because the Egyptian woman wished to touch him, fled from her hands, and, as though escaping the bite of most ravenous flesh, lest its venom should gradually spread, cast away the cloak which she had touched." Thus far St. Jerome. Let men note this, let young men note it.
Cardinal de Vitry, a serious and learned man, relates of St. Mary of Oignies that she had so mortified and dried up her body by fasting that for many years she did not feel even the first motions of lust; and when a serious man pressed her hand with chaste and spiritual affection, and felt motions of the flesh therefrom, she, not knowing this, heard a voice from heaven: "Touch me not," and did not understand it, but related it to another who understood the matter, and thereafter abstained from such contact.
St. Gregory relates, in Book IV of the Dialogues, chapter 11, that the priest St. Ursinus, separated from his wife, lived chastely; and when, at the point of death, he was drawing his last breath, his wife approached and put her ear to his nostrils to feel whether any vital breath was still in him. And he, perceiving this, although the faintest of breaths was in him, gathered his voice with all his strength, saying: "Depart from me, woman; a little fire still lives, take away the straw." Truly as the poet says:
As the basilisk by sight, the Achelöian Siren by song,
And the Thessalian witch slays by light touch:
So by eyes, by hands, so by song does woman burn;
So could the three-forked thunderbolt of Vejovis be.
St. Jerome rightly infers from this, in Book I Against Jovinian: Therefore it is an evil for a man to touch a woman; he does not say, a sin, as Jovinian and others have falsely accused St. Jerome of saying, but it is an evil — because this touching is an act of concupiscence and of carnal and depraved delight, which nevertheless is excused by the good of marriage, but is plainly removed by the good of celibacy.
You will say: In Genesis 2:18 it is said, "It is not good for man to be alone"; therefore it is good for a man to touch a woman.
I answer: God in Genesis speaks of the good of the species, Paul of the good of the individual; God speaks at a time when the world was empty, Paul when it was full; God of a temporal good, Paul of the good of the spiritual and eternal life. For in this latter, it is good for a man not to touch a woman.
Verse 2: But for Fear of Fornication
2. But for fear of fornication (lest, namely, he fall into it, if he be celibate and yet unwilling to live chastely), let each one have his own wife. — If "each one," then also the priest and the monk, say Melanchthon and Bucer, ought to have a wife. I answer: "Each one" — namely each one who is free, and not bound by a vow, by sickness, by old age, or any other impediment; for such a one is incapable of marriage. Laws and precepts are to be taken according to their proper matter, and are given only to those capable and not impeded. Therefore to him who is free and unattached and able, the Apostle does not command, but counsels and permits, that, if he fears fornication, he should take a wife, or use the wife already taken, rather than fall into the danger of fornication. Thus the Fathers whom I shall cite at verse 9, at the end. And this is plain, for otherwise the Apostle would contradict himself, since throughout the whole chapter he counsels chastity.
Add to this that the Apostle properly speaks only to the married, not to those who are celibate; for he begins to speak to these at verse 8, as is clear from the adversative conjunction "but" (autem), when he says: "But I say to the unmarried and widows," and from the fact that here he says "let him have," not "let him take" — because he was speaking to those who had already taken wives. Thus Jerome, Book I Against Jovinian: "Let every married man have his own wife," that is, continue to have her, retain her, not put her away or divorce her, but rather use her lawfully and chastely; for the verb "habeat" signifies an act not begun but continued. Thus 2 Timothy 1:13: "Hold the form of sound words"; that is, retain and preserve those things which you have and have received from me. So Luke 19:26: "To everyone who has (that is, uses his talent) shall be given; but from him who has not (that is, who does not use it, does not exercise his talent), even what he has shall be taken from him" — for otherwise, properly speaking, that which one does not have cannot be taken from him. See Canon 32. That this is the meaning is clear from what follows; for the Apostle adds, explaining himself: "Let the husband render the debt to his wife, and likewise the wife to the husband," etc.
Verse 3: Let the Husband Render the Debt to His Wife
3. Let the husband render the debt to his wife. — "The debt," in Greek ὀφειλομένην εὔνοιαν, the owed good-will: thus by a decent periphrasis the Apostle describes the conjugal debt.
Verse 4: The Wife Hath Not Power of Her Own Body
4. The Wife Hath Not Power of Her Own Body, but the Husband. — "Of her own body," namely, with respect to those members which distinguish the sexes, and inasmuch as they serve the conjugal act; "power," so that she may at her own will either contain herself or join herself to another; "the woman," namely the wife, "hath not"; but the husband does — and that with respect to himself alone, not to another. So St. Augustine, Book V Against Julian, chapter 4. Hence for "hath not power" the Greek is οὐκ ἐξουσιάζει, that is, "hath no right," namely to contain herself, or to surrender her body to another.
And in Like Manner the Husband Also (the husband) Hath Not Power of His Own Body, but the Wife. — Hence it is clear that, although in the administration of the household the wife should be inferior and subject to the husband, yet in the right and debt of marriage — in demanding and rendering it — she is equal to the husband, and has equal right with him over their mutual body, and this from the contract of marriage, in which each has equally surrendered to the other the power over his or her own body, and has received equal power over the body of the other (namely, of the spouse). The husband therefore is as much bound to the wife, as the wife to the husband, in the fidelity and debt of marriage. Thus St. Chrysostom, Theophylact, Oecumenius, Primasius, Anselm here, and St. Jerome (cited at Decretum, Causa 32, Question 2, chapter Apostolus) teach plainly from this passage of the Apostle: "Husband and wife," says Jerome, "are judged equally." "Therefore," says Chrysostom here in Homily 19, "when a harlot approaches you to tempt you, say that your body is not your own but your wife's; and likewise let the wife say to those who would assault her chastity: My body is not my own, but my husband's."
Verse 5: Defraud Not One Another
5. Defraud Not One Another (by denying the conjugal debt), Except, Perhaps, by Consent, for a Time, That You May Give Yourselves to Prayer. — The Greek adds, καὶ τῇ νηστείᾳ, "and to fasting." Hence Nicholas I, in chapter 50 of his Responses to the questions of the Bulgarians, writes to them that throughout all of Lent they should abstain from the use of their wives. This is a matter of counsel.
And Return Together Again. — In Greek ἐπὶ τὸ αὐτὸ συνέρχεσθε, "come together to the same" — namely, to render the customary conjugal debt. Hence Peter Martyr and the Magdeburg Centuriators hold that it is not lawful for spouses by mutual consent to vow perpetual continence.
But I reply that the Apostle here does not command but permits to spouses the use of marriage. This is plain first because he adds:
Verse 6: This I Speak by Indulgence, Not by Commandment
6. But I Speak This by Indulgence, Not by Commandment. — As if to say: I indulge intercourse, I do not command it. Indeed St. Augustine, Enchiridion chapter 78, reads: "This I say by way of pardon (venia)." For the Greek συγγνώμη signifies forgiveness, or pardon; and from this St. Augustine concludes that it is a venial sin to have intercourse with one's spouse not for the sake of children but of carnal pleasure, in order to avoid the temptations of Satan: for pardon is granted to a sin; and likewise indulgence is granted with respect to a sin, or at least to a lesser good — as St. Thomas rightly noted. Secondly, the Apostle permits that spouses should contain themselves for a time, while they devote themselves to prayer and fasting. Therefore if for their whole lives they wish to devote themselves to prayer and fasting, he permits them to contain themselves for their whole lives. Thirdly, he says, "Return together"; and adds the reason: "Lest Satan tempt you on account of your incontinence," that is, lest there be a danger that you may fall into adultery or other lusts because you are incontinent. Therefore if the cause ceases — namely the danger of incontinence, as it ceases in those who generously bridle and master it — he permits that they should always contain themselves. Fourthly, because he says in verse 7: "For I would that all men were as myself," that is, not chaste in just any way, but altogether continent, celibate, indeed virgins, as I am a celibate. Thus Ambrose, Theodoret, Theophylact, Anselm, Chrysostom, Oecumenius here, and Epiphanius, heresy 78; Jerome, Epistle 22 to Eustochium.
Fifthly, because in the early times of the Church many spouses, following these admonitions of Paul, preserved perpetual chastity by mutual consent, as Tertullian teaches in Book I To His Wife, chapter 6, and in the book On the Resurrection of the Flesh, chapter 8, and in the book On the Veiling of Virgins, chapter 13. The same is attested by the author of the Commentaries On the Singularity of the Clergy, found among the works of St. Cyprian.
Receive examples of spouses — not from the common people but illustrious in lineage as well as in sanctity and glory — who in marriage preserved continence and chastity unbroken. The first is that of the Blessed Virgin and Joseph, who raised the standard of chastity not only for virgins but also for the married. The second, of St. Cecilia and Valerian, noble martyrs — and so deservedly was the body of St. Cecilia in this age (under Clement VIII), after so many centuries, found unharmed and intact. The third, of St. Julian and Basilissa, whose illustrious Life is extant in Surius. The fourth, of St. Pulcheria Augusta, sister of the Emperor Theodosius, who, having vowed perpetual virginity to God, after Theodosius's death married Marcian on this condition, and made him Emperor, that she might preserve the chastity vowed to God — which she did, as Cedrenus and others attest. The fifth, of the Emperor Henry II and Cunegunda, who to prove her virginity walked unharmed over red-hot iron. The sixth, of Boleslaus V, prince of the Poles (who from this received the name "the Chaste"), and Cunegunda, daughter of Bela king of the Hungarians. The seventh, of King Conrad, son of the Emperor Henry IV, with his spouse Mathilda. The eighth, of Alfonso II, king of the Asturians, who, preserving continence with his spouse, received the name "the Chaste." Let Queen Richardis give the ninth example, who with her husband King Charles the Fat remained celibate. Let Pharaildis, the niece of St. Amelberga and likewise of Pepin, give the tenth — a perpetual virgin in marriage. Let Edward III and Edith give the eleventh — virgins and spouses. Let Etheldreda, queen of the East Angles, give the twelfth, who, married twice, always remained a virgin. Finally, let two Arvernian spouses give the thirteenth, of whom Gregory of Tours tells in his book On the Glory of the Confessors, chapter 32: when his wife had died, the husband, lifting his hands to heaven, said: "I give Thee thanks, O Maker of all things, that, as Thou didst deign to commend her to me, so I render her back to Thee unsullied by any pleasure of marriage." But she, smiling, said: "Hush, hush, man of God, for it is not necessary to disclose our secret." A little later the husband died and was buried in another place; and behold, when morning came, the tombs were found to be together, and they so remain to this day; wherefore now the inhabitants call them "The Two Lovers" and venerate them with the highest honor. Today also examples are not lacking.
Verse 7: I Would That All Men Were as Myself
7. For I would that all men were as myself, — as regards celibacy and continence, as I have already said.
Note: "I would (volo)" — that is, I should wish, I should desire, I should choose, if it could conveniently be done. "I would," therefore, signifies an act of willing inchoate and imperfect, according to Canon 32. This is clear from the fact that, correcting this "I would," the Apostle adds: "But each one has his proper gift from God." Again, "all" — that is, single individuals, or all taken separately, not collectively. For if all collectively were to abstain, there would be no marriage, and the human species and the world would perish. Thus we are said to be able to avoid all venial sins — "all," not collectively, but separately, that is each one taken singly. Others take "all" collectively: because if God were to inspire this mind of containing themselves in all, it would be a sign that the number of the elect was already complete, and that God willed to bring an end to the world. But Paul knew that God for that time willed the contrary — namely, that the Church of God should still grow and be propagated by marriages. The former explanation, therefore, is the truer.
But Every One Hath His Proper Gift from God: One after This Manner, and Another after That. — "He has his proper gift," namely of his own will, says the book On Chastity falsely ascribed to Pope Sixtus III, which is found in volume V of the Library of the Holy Fathers; for it is by some Pelagian. For throughout the whole book he teaches that chastity is the work of free will and of one's own will, not of the grace of God. See Bellarmine, Book II On Monks, chapter 31, and Book I On Clerics, chapter 21, ad 4. But this is the error of Pelagius: for one's own will, if you take away from it the grace of God, cannot be called God's proper gift. For one's own will is nothing other than the free choice of one's own will. For God has bestowed free will, similar and equal in all; therefore the fact that this man chooses chastity and that man marriage cannot be called a gift of God, if you take away God's grace; but this very fact is to be attributed to the free choice of each, which therefore in different persons is unequal and diverse.
I say therefore: "the proper gift" — namely, of chastity, whether conjugal, virginal, or widowed. "Therefore," the heretics say, "priests and monks, if they have not the gift of virginity, may enter marriage." But by the same reasoning I will infer: Therefore spouses, if they have not the gift of conjugal chastity — as there are many who commit adultery — will be able to commit adultery, or to enter into second marriages with adulterers. Again, if a wife is absent, unwilling, or sick, the husband may approach another, if he should say that he has not the gift of widowhood. Which, although raving Luther admits it, all nevertheless shudder at, and the Romans and other Gentiles regarded as a monstrosity, by the very instinct and dictate of nature.
I therefore answer with Chrysostom and the cited Fathers: The Apostle here consoles and indulges the weaker and the married, in that they have embraced the gift and state of conjugal chastity when they might before have embraced the virginal. For of the others, the unmarried, he adds, "It is good if they so remain," that is, if they wish so to remain — as if to say: "I would (that is, I should wish) all to be as myself," namely, virgins as I am a virgin; but I do not wish to command this, indeed I console the married and indulge them in the use of marriage, that they may comfort themselves by considering that each one has his proper gift from God, and that they truly have the gift of marriage, that is, conjugal chastity; for marriage too is a gift of God and instituted by God. For God wills, for the completion of the universe, that some — but in general and indeterminately — should be in marriage: although this gift of marriage is less than the gift of virginity.
You will say: Not only is the gift of marriage from God, but also the fact that this gift is proper to this man, and another to another — for example, that this man is a virgin, that one married, that one celibate.
I answer: This is sometimes true — as when God inspires in this man the disposition for celibacy, in that one for marriage (for example, in some king who can beget upright offspring most useful to the kingdom and the Church). But God does not always do this; rather, He often acts indifferently, so that He leaves entirely in the choice of many whether they shall choose marriage or celibacy.
You will press: How then does the Apostle say, "Each one has his proper gift from God"? I answer: This gift can be taken in two ways. First, as the state itself — for example, of marriage, of celibacy, of religion. Secondly, as the grace necessary and proper to this or that state. If you take it the first way, then each man's proper gift is from God, but only materially — because the gift which each one has chosen and made his own is also from God. For God instituted marriage, celibacy, and the other states either by Himself or through the Church, and to the one willing to embrace this or that state, He bestows and grants this or that; and so each one has his proper gift partly from God, partly from himself and from his own voluntary embracing of it. For properly and formally, the fact that this gift is proper to this or that person is often from free choice; yet it can be said to be from God to this extent, that all direction of secondary causes and all providence over good things is from God. For God by His common providence directs each one through parents, companions, confessors, teachers, and other occasions and secondary causes, by which it comes about that this man devotes himself to marriage, that man to the priesthood — but freely. For all this direction is not necessary to him, but free.
Note here: The Apostle could have said: "Each one has his proper state from himself, which he has chosen by his own liberty"; yet he preferred to say: "Each one has his proper gift from God," because he wishes to console the married. Lest, therefore, any of them, faint-hearted and penitent, torment himself and say: "Paul would have us be like himself, virgins and celibates; why then have I, miserable and unhappy, entered marriage? It is my fault that I did not embrace the better state of virginity, that I have defrauded myself of so great a good, that I have cast myself into these distractions and burdens of marriage." For this is the way of fainthearted men, of the afflicted and melancholy, especially when they experience difficulties in their own state, and so seek for better and more perfect things, in order to torment themselves — while they impute to themselves and their own imprudence the loss of some gain or some good, and the miseries which they have incurred. Paul therefore, in order to dispel this, says that it is not man's, but God's gift (in the sense I have said) — so that each one may rest in his own state and vocation as in a gift of God, may live joyfully, perfect himself, and give thanks to God.
Secondly, this gift can be the grace proper to each state: for spouses require one grace, that they may live in conjugal fidelity; virgins another, that they may live in virginity; and this grace proper to each is formally from God — because, granted that you have chosen a definite state, e.g. of marriage or of celibacy, God will give you the grace and gift proper to that state, so that you can live rightly in it, if you will. For this pertains to the right and ordered providence of God: since He has not willed to prescribe a definite state to each individual but has left the choice of state, like most other matters, to man's will and choice, when he has chosen it, He does not abandon the man, but bestows on him the grace necessary to live honorably in that state. For God and nature do not fail in necessary things; especially because God, as the Apostle says, wills all men, in every state, to be saved; and consequently He furnishes to all the means necessary for salvation, which, if they will to use, they can live holy and be saved. For otherwise it would be impossible for many to be saved — namely, religious and others who have bound themselves by the vow of chastity; spouses who have bound themselves by marriage to a definite person who is difficult, weak, or hateful — for the overcoming and rendering of which they would not have received the proper and sufficient grace from God. For neither can spouses be released from marriage, nor religious from their vow, that they may take up another state more suitable to themselves.
In this way the sense of this passage, "Each one has his proper gift from God," is as if to say: Choose any state you will, and God will give you the suitable and proper grace, that you may live in that state decently and holily. So Ambrose. And this is what the Apostle properly intends here, as is clear from the word "But I would (volo autem)," as if to say: I have said that I indulge — not command — the married in the use of marriage; for I would wish all to abstain from it, to cultivate chastity, and to practice celibacy. But each has his proper gift; let each comfort himself with that, let him exercise it — namely, let the celibate, who has received virginal or widowed chastity (that is, the grace by which he can contain himself), accept it as a gift of God; let the married man, who has received conjugal chastity (that is, the grace of using marriage chastely), accept it as a gift of God, be content with it, comfort himself with it, use it as a gift of God.
Hence it follows, first, that God gives to monks — even apostates — sufficient gift and grace, namely the grace by which they can be chaste if they will; that is, provided they pray to God, devote themselves to fasting, pious reading, work, and perpetual occupation. For otherwise they would be bound to the impossible, and God would fail in necessary things, nor would they themselves have the gift proper to their state, which nevertheless the Apostle here asserts: "Each one," he says — namely the celibate, the virgin, and the married man alike — "has the gift" of chastity, proper to himself and to his state.
It follows, secondly, that if anyone changes his state for the better, God also changes, and gives him a greater gift and a greater grace proper to that state. For this is necessary for the more perfect state. Thus the Council of Trent defines, session 24, canon 9: "If anyone shall say that clerics constituted in sacred Orders, or regulars who have solemnly professed chastity, who feel that they have not the gift of chastity, can contract marriage, let him be anathema; since God does not deny it to those who rightly ask, nor does He suffer us to be tempted above that which we are able."
He Hath His Gift from God. — Note that the gifts of God are twofold. First, some are entirely from God. Thus the gifts of nature — that is, of God, inasmuch as He is the author and craftsman of nature — are intellect, judgment, memory, good disposition. The gifts of grace are faith, hope, charity, and all the virtues infused by God, inasmuch as He is the author of grace.
Secondly, other gifts are indeed from God, but require for their effect our cooperation: so prevenient graces and good inspirations are gifts of God; so good works and the acts of all the virtues are gifts of God, says St. Augustine, because God gives grace — first, prevenient, by which He excites to these works and acts; secondly, cooperating, by which He works and produces the same with man, but in such a way that He wills these to be done freely by man, and that it should be in his power to do them or not, to use the given grace or not to use it. Thus then good works are gifts of God; yet they are free to man, and in man's choice and power. Such a gift of chastity — namely, of the second kind — is what the Apostle here understands. The gift, therefore, of chastity is properly the infused or acquired habit of chastity in those who have this habit; but in those who do not yet have the habit, it is the sufficient help of grace, both internal and external, prepared by God for each individual, so that with one's own free cooperation each can be chaste in his own state, if he wishes to use that help. Which is plain, because, as is said at verses 25, 35, 38, celibacy is the counsel of God and of Christ, who proposes and counsels it to all: but He does not counsel except what is in each one's power; and celibacy is not in each one's power unless the will is aided by the grace of God; therefore Christ has prepared for each man this grace necessary for celibacy and virginity, and is ready to give it. If He is ready to give to each virginal chastity, much more then marital chastity. Each one therefore has the proper gift of his own state, that is, his proper grace, in first act, in God's preparation, and will have the same in second act, if he wishes seriously and constantly to pray to God to bestow on him the grace prepared for him, and if he wishes earnestly to cooperate with the grace bestowed.
Verse 8: I Say to the Unmarried and to the Widows
8. I Say to the Unmarried and to Widows: It Is Good for Them If They So Remain (namely, unmarried as they are), Even as I — remain unmarried.
Hence it is most clear that St. Paul did not have a wife, but was celibate. So the Fathers cited at verse 7.
Verse 9: It Is Better to Marry Than to Burn
9. If They Do Not Contain Themselves, Let Them Marry; for It Is Better (more advantageous) to Marry Than to Burn.
The Apostle seems to allude to the words of Naomi, by which she exhorts her Moabite daughters-in-law to return to their homeland Moab and there be married, saying, Ruth chapter 1, verse 13: halahen teagena lebilti heioth leisch, that is: shall you not be burned without a husband? It is better that you, being young, return and marry a husband, than to remain with me celibate without a husband and burn; though St. Jerome translates, you will be old women before you marry: for he takes the burning to mean old age, which by the force of heat, with the radical moisture consumed, seems to be scorched and consumed. For what Pagninus and others translate, Shall you be shut in without a husband? seems a fabrication of R. Kimchi, whom they follow: who invents that the root teagena is aga, and that this signifies to shut; though nowhere else is this meaning, nor this root aga to be found. Therefore the root of teagena is not aga, but ug, customary among the Hebrews, which means to burn, to scorch, to scald: whence cakes baked under coals and scorched are called uggot.
Now "it is better to marry than to burn," that is, that the weak should marry, lest they burn, that is, fornicate: for He wishes other generous champions to be continent, as if to say: Those who do not contain themselves, let them marry; for it is better to marry than not to be continent. So Theodoret, Ambrose, Anselm, St. Thomas, Augustine, On Holy Virginity, ch. LXXIV; Jerome, Apology for the books against Jovinian. "Better," says Jerome, "is it to marry than to burn," that is, it is better to take a husband than to fornicate. And Ambrose: "To burn," he says, "is to be driven by desires, or to be conquered; for when the will consents to the heat of the flesh, it burns: for to suffer desires, and not be conquered, belongs to an illustrious and perfect man."
You will say: St. Cyprian, epistle 41, book I to Pomponius, says of virgins consecrated to Christ: "If they will not, or cannot persevere, it is better to marry than to burn." Pamelius, drawing on Torres and Hosius, replies well that Cyprian is not speaking of virgins already consecrated to Christ, but of those about to be consecrated; he warns these not to consecrate and devote themselves to Christ if they will not persevere: for the same epistle teaches that they are adulteresses of Christ, if after the vow of chastity they are joined to husbands. He therefore speaks of those who are free and unattached, not bound by a vow, just as the Apostle does here. Therefore Erasmus, in his usual manner, perversely and impudently notes in the margin to the cited passage of Cyprian these words: Cyprian permits sacred virgins to marry.
You will say secondly, St. Augustine, book On Holy Virginity, ch. xxxiv, says that those who, bound by vow, fornicate, would do better if they married than if they burned, that is, were laid waste by the flame of concupiscence. I reply, first, St. Augustine says this in passing in this sense, namely that for such persons it is better, that is, a lesser evil, to marry than to fornicate: he does not therefore deny that they sin by marrying, but only asserts that they sin less by marrying than by fornicating. Thus we would say to a robber: it is better to despoil a man than to kill him: better, that is, a lesser evil. Secondly, for such persons absolutely it is also better to marry than to burn, namely if they enter into these nuptials lawfully, that is, with the consent of the Church and dispensation of the Pontiff from the vow of continence. Thirdly, perhaps St. Augustine held this opinion, which does not seem improbable, namely that even apart from dispensation, for such persons, although bound by vow, it is preferable to marry than to fornicate, namely habitually; because no doubt they live and dwell in a state of fornication and concubinage. And the reason is, because such a person, if she marries, sins indeed gravely against the vow by marrying; yet after marriage she can keep the vow of chastity, in such wise as not to sin, namely if she does not demand, but only renders the debt, as generally happens in the women of whom St. Augustine speaks; but if such a one habitually fornicates, then by acts assiduously repeated she violates the vow, and consequently sins more gravely than if she married. For those acts of fornication assiduously repeated seem to be a far graver evil and graver sins than the one act and contract of marriage entered into against the vow of continence: for although this one act virtually and implicitly includes many, such as the request and rendering of the conjugal debt as often as the spouse pleases, yet this happens only remotely and implicitly; whereas one who fornicates habitually sins proximately and explicitly, and daily repeats these acts; therefore she sins more gravely: for it is worse to sin explicitly and by many acts, than by one tacit and implicit.
Note: "To burn" does not mean to feel warmth or to be tempted by the ardors of lust, but to be wounded, conquered, to yield, and to consent: for one is said to "burn" from a fire, not because one feels its heat, but because one is wounded and scorched by it. Thus of Dido, who had been overcome and captivated by love of Aeneas, Virgil sings, Aeneid IV: Unhappy Dido burns, and wanders raging through the whole city. And Ecclesiasticus, ch. xxiii, verse 22: "A hot soul," he says, "boiling with lust, like a burning fire, will not be extinguished until it has devoured something." For the Apostle gives the reason why He wills the incontinent and weak to marry, namely lest they burn, that is, be conquered. Hence it is true that St. Paul does not forbid even the continent to be tempted and feel warmth, but only wills that they not be conquered, but rather overcome and vanquish the temptation. Hence both St. Paul glories in his most troublesome temptation, II Corinthians xii, 9, and many other saints, and namely that one to whom, while he most stoutly resisted a grave temptation, the demons, conquered and confounded by him, cried out: "Thou hast conquered, thou hast conquered; for thou wast in the fire and didst not burn."
Notice here that, in the time of St. Augustine, those women who had vowed and professed chastity, although they sinned by marrying, nevertheless contracted a valid marriage: for at that time the solemn vow had not yet been constituted by the Church as a diriment impediment to marriage, as Augustine sufficiently intimates here. Finally, that St. Augustine judges that such persons ought simply and absolutely to keep their vow and contain themselves, is clear from what follows; for he adds: "These who repent of their profession and are loath of confession, unless they direct a corrected heart, and with the fear of God again conquer their lust, must be reckoned among the dead."
Finally, that the Apostle here speaks to those who are free, but not to those who are bound by vow, is expressly taught by Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophylact, Oecumenius here, Epiphanius, heresy 61; Ambrose, To the Fallen Virgin, ch. v; Augustine, book I On Adulterous Marriages, ch. xv; Jerome, book I Against Jovinian. And most precisely St. Ephrem, more than 1300 years ago, when asked to whom this saying of the Apostle, "It is better to marry than to burn," pertains, wrote a treatise on this matter, in which he demonstrates with many proofs that it pertains not to Religious or clerics, or to those who have vowed chastity, but to seculars who are free and unattached.
Verse 10: To Those Who Are Joined in Marriage
10. To Those Who Are Joined in Marriage.
The Apostle passes from the question of marriage to the question of divorce. For the Corinthians had proposed to Paul, as is clear from his response in this verse, this second question concerning divorce: namely, granted that in marriage the use of it is lawful, indeed obligatory, as Paul has already answered, whether it might at least be lawful for a faithful spouse to dissolve the marriage and obtain a divorce. Again, whether, after a divorce has been made, one might not marry another, or take another wife. To this question the Apostle here replies, saying:
Verse 11: Let the Wife Not Depart from Her Husband
11. To Those Who Are Joined in Marriage, Not I, But the Lord Commands, That the Wife Depart Not from Her Husband: And If She Depart, That She Remain Unmarried, or Be Reconciled to Her Husband.
"To remain unmarried." Hence it follows that divorce, even when just and lawful, does not dissolve the bond of marriage, but only the partnership of the bed, so that if a wife is an adulteress, it is not lawful for the innocent husband to enter another marriage. The same is the rule for the wife, if the husband is an adulterer.
Note this against the heretics and Erasmus, Cajetan and Catharinus, who say that this cannot be proved from Scripture, but only from the Canons. But they err, as is clear from this passage of Paul. For that the Apostle here speaks of just divorce (which a wife obtains when she is innocent and injured by her husband, e.g. because he is an adulterer) is clear, because He permits her either to remain separated or to be reconciled to her husband: for if He were speaking of unjust divorce (e.g. when a wife flees from her husband without any fault of the husband), He would not permit separation, but altogether command reconciliation.
You will say: The word "reconciled" indicates an offense and injustice in the wife, who made the divorce; therefore he understands an unjust divorce. I answer by denying the antecedent: for to be reconciled means only to return to mutual favor, and the offender is just as much said to be reconciled to the offended as the offended to the offender, as in II Maccabees 1:5: "That God may hear your prayers, and be reconciled to you." So the Councils and Fathers explain this passage, and from it teach that fornication dissolves the marriage as to the bed and cohabitation, but not as to the bond, such that it would be lawful to take another wife.
Thus the Council of Milevis explains and teaches, ch. xvii; the Council of Elvira, ch. ix; the Council of Florence, in the Instruction for the Armenians on marriage; the Council of Trent, session XX, canon 7; Pope Evaristus, epistle 2; St. Augustine, book II On Adulterous Marriages, ch. IV; Jerome, epistle to Amandus; Theodoret, Oecumenius, Haymo, Anselm, and others here.
You will say: Ambrose here says that the Apostle names only the wife, because for her it is never lawful to marry another after divorce; but for the husband it is lawful, after he has dismissed an adulterous wife, to take another, because he is the head of the woman. I reply: From these and similar passages it is clear that this commentary on Paul's Epistles is not by St. Ambrose, or certainly that these things have been inserted into it. For the true Ambrose teaches that in marriage and divorce the right of the wife is equal to that of the husband, book VIII on Luke, and book I On Abraham, ch. IV. Therefore what the Apostle says about the wife, He understands by equal right of the husband: for He speaks to all those who are joined in marriage, as He himself says; and at verse 4 He taught that there is equal right of wife and husband in marriage, and equal power over each other's body.
And the Husband Put Not Away His Wife — without grave and just cause. For on account of fornication and for other just causes it is lawful to dismiss her.
Verse 12: To the Rest I Speak, Not the Lord
12. For to the Rest I Speak, Not the Lord. If Any Brother Has an Unbelieving Wife, and She Consents to Dwell with Him, Let Him Not Put Her Away.
"To the rest," namely to spouses of unequal worship, "I say, if a brother," that is, a faithful Christian, has an unbelieving wife, etc., as if to say: At verse 10 and thus far I have spoken tacitly to spouses faithful on both sides, as I sufficiently hinted at verse 5 saying: "That you may have leisure for prayer"; but here I speak to those of whom one is faithful, the other unbelieving. So many explain it, with St. Augustine soon to be cited.
But if it is so, it is very strange why the Apostle did not express this more clearly, which He could have done with a single word added, by saying: "But to the faithful who are joined in marriage, I command, not I, but the Lord: but to the rest (namely the unbelieving, that is, if a believer marries an unbeliever) I say, not the Lord." Now indeed by saying, not "to the faithful," but "to those who are joined in marriage," He seems generally and abstractly to speak of all married persons, whether they be faithful or unbelieving; for that at verse 5 He turns His attention in passing to the faithful, is no wonder. For there He excepts from the general law of the conjugal debt the faithful spouses, when by mutual consent they have leisure for prayer. But this exception is not to be extended to the general laws of marriage which He here prescribes for all spouses. Add that, thus far, the Apostle has not made even a word about the unbeliever or about disparity of worship.
Whence secondly and better, "to the rest," namely those who are not joined in marriage. For He opposes this verse to verse 10, as is clear from the word "for" and from the word "to the rest": which will soon be clearer.
I Speak, Not the Lord. — "I say," that is, I command, says Theodoret. Secondly and better, St. Augustine, book I On Adulterous Marriages, ch. xiii and following, Anselm and St. Thomas, "I say," that is, I counsel that which follows, namely, that the believer should not put away an unbelieving spouse who is peaceable.
Thirdly and best, the Roman, Plantinian, and other most corrected Bibles so distinguish that after the "for to the rest I speak, not the Lord," they place a period, and thus disjoin these words from what follows, as if they should be referred to what precedes: "to the rest," namely those not joined in marriage and unmarried, the Lord does not command (for the "He commands" is left to be supplied by antithesis from the preceding verse, where He says thus: "To those who are joined in marriage, I command, not I, but the Lord; but to the rest," that is, those not joined in marriage, "the Lord does not command"), but I say and counsel that which I said and counseled a little before at verse 8, namely: "It is good if they so remain," that is, unmarried. For that these things must be referred to what precedes, not to what follows, is clear from the period interposed, as I said, and because the Apostle opposes "to the rest" to the preceding, namely those who are joined in marriage: therefore "the rest" are those who are not joined in marriage, that is, unmarried, but not spouses of unequal worship; for of these He has hitherto made no mention. Finally He so explains himself at verse 25, when He says: "But concerning virgins I have no precept of the Lord, but I give counsel"; which is the same as what He says here: "To the rest I say, not the Lord."
If Any Brother Has an Unbelieving Wife.
This is the third question proposed by the Corinthians to Paul: whether a faithful spouse may dwell with an unbelieving spouse. St. Augustine and others, as I said, link these to what precedes: "To the rest I say, not the Lord," as if to say: Although Christ has permitted the believer to dismiss an unbelieving wife, yet I say and counsel that he should not dismiss her; because to dismiss her is not expedient for the salvation of the offspring and of the unbelieving spouse, if she consents — namely without insult to the Creator and the faith — to dwell with the believer. Hence many Doctors, whom Henriquez cites, book XI On Matrimony, ch. viii, gather indirectly by antithesis: therefore since Paul wills what Christ permits, by Christ's permission the faithful spouse will be able to dismiss an unbelieving spouse who is unwilling to be converted, and to enter another marriage. Just as on the contrary, when both are faithful, neither is permitted, as was said before. But if we disjoin these, as the Roman and other Bibles everywhere disjoin them by an interposed period, nothing of the kind can be proved from this.
Indeed Thomas Sanchez, vol. II On Matrimony, disp. LXXIII, no. 7, who reads without a period, as St. Augustine does, by referring these to what follows, only wishes to deduce from this precisely that Christ permits to a faithful spouse the divorce of the bed, but not the dissolution of a marriage entered into with an unbeliever. Thirdly, someone might explain it thus: "I say, not Christ"; because Christ established nothing on this matter, but left it to be established by the Apostles and the Church, according to the variety of times, as later the Church invalidated the marriage of a believer with an unbeliever, if a believer marries an unbeliever; therefore according to St. Augustine's reading this opinion is obscurely and doubtfully drawn from this passage: but according to the Roman and truer reading, it cannot in any way be drawn from here. For the Apostle only wills that the believer should not dismiss the unbeliever, if the unbeliever consents to dwell with the believer. About which more at verse 15.
Note: Unbelief in the time of St. Paul was neither a diriment impediment to a marriage contracted with a believer, nor an impediment to one to be contracted or already contracted, if there was no danger of perversion to the believer, but the unbeliever consented to dwell peaceably with the believer remaining a believer, as the Apostle here teaches. But now by custom it has been introduced in the Church that not heresy, but unbelief, not only impedes but also nullifies a marriage which a believer would wish to contract with an unbeliever.
Verse 14: The Unbelieving Husband Is Sanctified by the Believing Wife
14. For the Unbelieving Husband Is Sanctified by the Believing Wife,
as if to say: This marriage and union is holy: hence the believer is not profaned nor polluted by the contact with the unbeliever, as you scrupulously fear; but rather the unbeliever is sanctified by it through a certain moral denomination and as if by a sprinkling of holiness, says Anselm: both because he is the husband of a holy, that is, faithful spouse; and because by not hindering her in her faith and by living benevolently with her, he as it were paves the way for himself, that through the prayers, merits, words, and examples of the faithful spouse he too may be converted and become holy: just as St. Cecilia converted her husband Valerian, Theodora converted Sisinnius, Clotilda converted Clovis. So Anselm, Theophylact, Chrysostom.
Illustrious was St. Natalia, wife of St. Adrian the martyr, who advanced her husband not only to the faith but also to undergo a glorious martyrdom for her. For when she had heard that it was forbidden for women to serve the Martyrs, nor that access to them in prison be opened to them, she shorn her hair, and putting on a man's garment, entered the prison and refreshed the Martyrs with her services. After her, other matrons followed in similarly disguised dress. And finally when the tyrant Maximianus had discovered this, he ordered an anvil to be brought into the prison and placed under the Martyrs' feet, and their hands and shins to be broken with an iron bar. The lictors did what they had been ordered. When Blessed Natalia saw this, she ran to them and asked that they begin with Adrian. The executioners obeyed, and when they had placed Adrian's shin upon the anvil, Blessed Natalia, taking hold of his foot, stretched it over the anvil. The executioners, striking with great force, cut off his feet, and broke his legs. Then Blessed Natalia said to Adrian: "I beg you, my lord, servant of Christ, while the spirit yet clings to you, extend also your hand, that they may cut it off, that you may be made like the holy Martyrs in all things: for they suffered greater punishments than you." So most blessed Adrian extended his hand and gave it to Natalia, she placed it on the anvil, and the executioners likewise cut it off. Then they removed the anvil from him, and soon he gave up the spirit. So his Life records, on the 8th of September.
Memorable is what Gennadius, Patriarch of Constantinople, writes in his exposition of the Council of Florence, session V, concerning Theophilus, an emperor not pagan but heretical, son of Michael the Stammerer, saved by the prayers of his Augusta wife. For when he had assailed the sacred images, his mouth was so distorted that his entrails were seen: he therefore returned to his senses and kissed a sacred image. A little later he was carried thence to the tribunal of God, on behalf of whom, when assiduous prayers were poured forth by holy men and by the queen, pardon was given to him. For the queen saw Theophilus in dreams bound and dragged by an innumerable multitude both preceding and following. Before him were carried various kinds of instruments suited for torture, and these themselves seemed to follow those who were being led to punishment, until they came into the sight of the terrible Judge, and they set Theophilus before him. Then the Augusta, prostrating herself at the feet of that dreadful Judge, with many tears earnestly entreated for her husband. To her the terrible Judge said: "Woman, great is thy faith, for thy sake and through the prayers of thy priests I grant pardon to thy husband." Then He said to His ministers: "Loose him and hand him over to his wife." Similarly the Patriarch — Methodius, namely — having noted in writing the names of all the heretics and of Theophilus himself, placed these same writings under the sacred altar, and the same night in which the queen had her vision, he himself saw a divine angel entering the great temple, who said: "Bishop, your prayers are heard, and Theophilus has obtained pardon." When he awoke from sleep, he came to the sacred altar, and when he there read the booklet written a little before, he found (O the judgments of God!) the name of Theophilus erased. So Gennadius cited above, and Baronius, vol. IX of the Annals, at the year of Christ 842.
Otherwise Your Children Would Be Unclean (as if to say: If you were to make a divorce from the unbelieving spouse, your children would be regarded as born from an unlawful bed, adulterous, illegitimate), but now they are holy, — that is clean. For "holy" is opposed to "unclean": "clean" meaning conceived and born of an honorable and legitimate marriage. So Ambrose, Anselm, Augustine, book II On the Merits of Sin, ch. xxvi.
Secondly, they would properly be unclean, because they would be enticed by the unbelieving parent, in hatred of the faithful spouse who effected the divorce, and brought up in unbelief, especially if the father is the unbeliever; because in case of repudiation the offspring usually follow the father. But now while the believer remains with the unbeliever in marriage, "they are holy," because with the unbeliever's connivance, by the faith, diligence, and care of the believing parent, they can easily be sanctified, baptized, and brought up in a Christian manner. So St. Augustine, book III On the Merits of Sin, ch. xii, and from Tertullian, Jerome, epistle 153 to Paulinus.
Hence Calvin and Beza drew their dogma of the inheritance of justice, and teach that the children of the faithful are properly holy and saved without baptism: because by the very fact that they are children of the faithful, they are reckoned to be born in the Church, according to the divine covenant: "I will be thy God and the God of thy seed," Genesis xvii, 7. Just as by civil law those are reckoned free who are born of one free parent.
But they err: because the Apostle equally says that the unbelieving husband is sanctified through the believing wife: but such a husband is not, properly and precisely, sanctified by his wife, as is clear; therefore neither is the son. Secondly, the Church is not a civil republic, but a supernatural one, and in it no one is born a Christian, but by baptism, as also formerly by circumcision, Genesis xvii, each one is spiritually reborn and made holy, not civilly but really, through faith, hope, and charity infused into the soul. So the Fathers and the whole Church. Thirdly, because in John III, 5, it is absolutely said: "Unless one is born again of water and the Holy Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." Therefore it is false that anyone not born again of water, namely one born of believing parents, can enter the kingdom of God.
Verse 15: But If the Unbeliever Depart, Let Him Depart
15. But If the Unbeliever Depart, Let Him Depart.
Namely, if the unbeliever seeks dissolution, or is unwilling to cohabit without injury to the Creator, that is, because he wishes to draw the spouse into unbelief or another crime, or hurls blasphemies against God, the faith, or Christ, says Thomas Sanchez, in the volume cited, disp. LXXIV, drawing on the common opinion of the Doctors: for by this very fact he is morally judged to wish to depart and seek separation; then let the believer also depart from such an unbelieving spouse, because it is better, says Chrysostom, to make a divorce of the nuptials than of piety.
Verse 16: For How Dost Thou Know, O Wife, Whether Thou Shalt Save Thy Husband?
Following the prior signification of peace already mentioned, the sense will be, as if to say: Remain and live in peace, as far as you can, O believer, with the unbelieving spouse, because you do not know the good that may follow from it: perhaps by remaining with the unbelieving spouse, you may convert and save him. So Chrysostom, Ambrose, Anselm, Theophylact, and others.
Note the Hebraism "si" ("if"), meaning "perhaps": similar to Joel II, 14 and elsewhere. For He gives the reason why God has called us in peace, and wills the believing spouse to remain and live peaceably with the unbeliever, namely that through this peace the believer may convert the unbeliever.
Secondly and more plainly (following the latter sense of peace already mentioned) the more fitting sense will be this: "God has called us in peace. For how dost thou know, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband?" as if to say: The gift of Christ is peace; to this, and not to a restless and quarrelsome servitude, we have been called by Christ. If therefore the unbeliever, by quarrels, insults, and threats against the faith and the believing spouse, seeks separation, depart, O faithful spouse, from him, that you may live peacefully, and do not pretend to a hope of his conversion. For whence would you hope it in a pagan man, blasphemer, and brawler? and consequently, whence do you know, or whence do you hope, that you will save him?
Verse 17: As the Lord Hath Distributed to Every One, As God Hath Called Each, So Let Him Walk
Construct these with clear syntax thus: So let each one walk, as the Lord has distributed to each, and as God has called each.
Note: "nisi" here, as the Syriac translates, is the same as ella, that is "but," "yet," or "with this proviso": see Canon 25, as if to say: I have said these things about the marriage of a believer with an unbeliever, and about departure and divorce if the unbeliever should seek it, and about peace and peaceful life; yet so that I do not wish divorce to be sought, or peace to be disturbed, by the desire and longing to change one's state — namely that the believer, because she is faithful and asserted into Christian liberty, should desire and pretend to change her state and condition from servile to free, from Gentile to Jewish. Therefore, with this single proviso: let each believer retain the state and condition which the Lord has given, and which he had before he was a believer — whether Jew or Gentile, whether slave or free; let each walk in his own lot, content with it, and live as a Christian, nor, on account of Christianity, restlessly change his state and with scandal to the Gentiles. In Greek for "nisi" it is εἰ μή, which more recent translators render "or not," and refer to the preceding sentence, as if to say: How do you know whether you shall save the woman, or not? But the Greek εἰ μή also means "unless otherwise." So our translator, Erasmus and others, who join this very phrase to what follows.
This seems to have been the fourth question which the Corinthians proposed to Paul: namely, whether Christians, if before conversion they had been slaves, became free through Christianity, and consequently, whether all slaves and bondservants, if they were converted to Christ, would by this very fact be claimed into liberty? for this Christian liberty, into which we have been redeemed and asserted by Christ, seems to urge and demand. Again, whether Gentiles, having become or about to become Christians, ought to be circumcised and become Jews? For because the Apostles and the first Christians were Jews, and Christianity began from the Jews: hence some thought that no one could be a Christian unless first initiated into Judaism. Paul here answers both questions negatively.
Verse 18: Is Any Man Called Being Circumcised? Let Him Not Bring On Prepuce
In Greek μὴ ἐπισπάσθω, that is, let him not draw on, namely with an iron tool, the prepuce. So Theophylact and Photius.
Note that the prepuce could be restored to the circumcised, by drawing the skin with an attractor instrument which they call a spastiter, so that it again covered the glans, as Celsus teaches, book VII, ch. xxv. And that those who apostatized from the Jews to the Gentiles were accustomed to do this is clear from I Maccabees 1, 18; and from Josephus, book XII of the Antiquities, ch. vi; and from Epiphanius, book On Weights and Measures; where he posits Esau as the author of this restoration, and that for this reason it was said: "Esau I have hated." And from this he teaches that the Jews, when they passed over to the Samaritans, or vice versa, were accustomed to be circumcised a second time, and thus Symmachus circumcised himself a second time — Symmachus who, like Aquila and Theodotion, was a famous interpreter of sacred Scripture: just as the Anabaptists baptize their renegades a second time.
Hence the commentator on Martial thought, explaining that line of epigram I, on Caelia: "Nor dost thou shun the loins of the recut Jews"; that the Jews are called "recut," so named: Because, he says, in Jewish boys the skin of the loins was cut away, and afterwards when the skin grew back, they were called "recut." And Persius, satire v, calls the Jewish feasts "recut Sabbaths." Where the commentator says: He calls the Jews "recut," those for whom a new skin has been restored. In other places however, both he himself and others call those "recut" who are circumcised, as if "cut back as to the skin," so that "recutitus" is the same as "apella," that is, "without skin," concerning whom the Poet says: "____ Let the apella Jew believe it, Not I."
Secondly, more aptly and more plainly: "If you can become free," if you can be liberated from slavery, "rather make use of it," namely of the power and convenience, and shake off servitude — as if to say: If you can become free, embrace freedom, and enjoy it; for this is what the Greek phrase plainly signifies — "rather make use of it" — and this is to be urged above the other course, just as it is to be wished for. For who would not prefer to become free rather than to remain a slave? Especially if he serves an unbeliever, in such a way that he cannot freely serve Christ; concerning which Paul also clearly persuades shortly afterwards, saying: "You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men." Note: by "slaves" here the Apostle understands not hired servants, such as exist now among Christians, but bondservants, such as the Gentiles had — and as those even now converted to Christ retained — and as Christians still have from among the Turks and Moors. For he sets slaves over against free men.
St. Jerome, in his Apology for the books against Jovinian, drawing from Origen at the beginning of Book I on the Epistle to the Romans, explains these words otherwise — namely, of the bondage of matrimony — as if to say: If you are bound, as a servant, to matrimony, "let it not be a care to you," that is, do not torment yourself, as though in matrimony you could not live piously and obtain salvation. "But if you can become free, rather make use of it," as if to say: If, however, you can persuade your wife to live celibate apart, rather embrace this. But the earlier sense is plainer and more genuine.
Excellently does St. Ephrem say, in Exhortation 4, vol. II: "In whatever work you have been called, fasten your anchors and ropes firmly — that you may stand there as in a harbor, safe from storms — lest your ship be driven out into the open sea."
Verse 21. WERE YOU CALLED AS A SLAVE? LET IT NOT BE A CARE TO YOU — that is, do not be anxiously solicitous about being a slave, as though servitude were a condition unworthy of Christian men; but rather console yourself with this, that you have been manumitted by Christ from the wretched bondage of sin and death, and made a servant of God, even though in this life you serve a man for as long as it pleases God. This is plain from the following verse. On this matter see the apophthegms I cited at Exodus 1:12.
Golden is the maxim of St. Augustine in his Sentences, no. 53: "Whatever evils, he says, any master inflicts on the just, it is not the penalty of crime, but the trial of virtue. For even a good man, though he serves, is free; but a wicked man, though he reigns, is a slave — and not of one man only, but, what is graver, of as many masters as there are vices." And no. 124: "Servitude under God is always free — under God whom not necessity, but charity, serves."
BUT IF YOU CAN BECOME FREE, RATHER MAKE USE OF IT — that is, of servitude itself, for the glory of the Lord and for the sake of humility. Whence Theodoret expounds thus: "Grace," he says, "knows no distinction between slavery and lordship. Therefore do not flee servitude as unworthy of the faith. But if it be possible for you to attain freedom, continue to serve, and await your reward."
Thus also do St. Chrysostom, Theophylact, and St. Thomas explain it. With this exposition that which follows fits aptly: "For he who is called in the Lord as a slave is the Lord's freedman."
And this is the truer reading: for it is not likely that the skin cut off in circumcision should naturally grow back of itself, especially in men; and because otherwise it would have been done not by art but by nature — though Celsus and Epiphanius nevertheless ascribe it to art and describe the technique.
St. Jerome explains this passage otherwise, on Isaiah 53: "If anyone, he says, has been called circumcised, let him not bring on the foreskin" — that is, as the Apostle adds in other words: "Have you been called without a wife? Do not take a wife." But this sense is mystical and symbolic, not literal and genuine.
CIRCUMCISION IS NOTHING. — As if to say: Circumcision neither helps nor hinders salvation for a Christian man; for he is speaking of Jews converted to Christianity, as is plain from what precedes. See Cajetan, Ambrose, and Anselm.
Verse 20. LET EACH ONE REMAIN IN THE CALLING IN WHICH HE WAS CALLED. — So that if a circumcised man, a slave, or a married man comes to Christianity, he should not on that account change his state, but remain circumcised, a slave, married — as if to say: keep your state, whatever it may be, that is, if the state be lawful and honorable; for otherwise St. Cyprian was unwilling that actors should be admitted to the Sacraments of the Church.
Verse 22. FOR HE WHO HAS BEEN CALLED IN THE LORD AS A SLAVE. — These words are to be referred not to what immediately precedes — "But if you can become free, rather make use of it" — but, in the Hebrew manner, to what comes before that, namely: "Were you called as a slave? Let it not be a care to you." For this is the chief thing the Apostle here intends: to teach slaves to be content with their servile condition and to bear it patiently, until God's providence ordain otherwise and free them from servitude. Now "in the Lord" means "by the Lord," and unto the faith and grace of the Lord Jesus. See Canon 25.
IS THE LORD'S FREEDMAN. — He has been manumitted by the Lord — namely Christ — and laid claim to for Christian liberty; as if to say: Slaves of human masters, if they become Christians, should not strive to be freed from their servitude under their masters, but should rather glory that they have been laid claim to from the servitude of sin and brought into the liberty of grace and of the adoption of the sons of God. See Chrysostom here, and in the moral homily 19, how servitude does not impede Christian liberty.
Verse 23. YOU WERE BOUGHT WITH A PRICE (that is, with the Blood of Christ, which by antonomasia is called "the price," since it is vast and immeasurable. Thus Ambrose. As if to say: Christ at the greatest price bought and redeemed you out of the slavery of sin, and made you His freedmen; therefore) DO NOT BECOME SLAVES OF MEN — that is, do not sell yourselves as slaves, or hand yourselves over to servitude, if you can enjoy liberty: for this civil liberty befits Christ's freedman, that you may serve Christ wholly all the better, in proportion as you serve any earthly master — and especially a pagan one — less.
Hence afterwards Constantine the Great, around the year of Christ 330, in honor of Christ and in favor of the Christian religion, decreed that in no way should a Jew have or possess a Christian slave; and he ordered that any Jew who acted otherwise should be beheaded, and that such a slave should be granted his liberty, as is plain from the single law in Book I of the Code, under the title "That a heretic, Jew, or Pagan should not have a Christian bondservant"; for he held it not lawful that Christians, redeemed by the death of Christ, should be subjected to the yoke of servitude under the slayers of Christ the Redeemer. This law the sons of Constantine afterwards confirmed, as Sozomen testifies, Book III, chapter XVII. Likewise St. Gregory decreed that a Jew's slave, if he wished to be converted to Christianity, should by that very fact become free, as is plain from Book III, Epistle 9. The Fourth Council of Toledo has similar provisions, chapter LXIV.
Understand these things of Jews and Pagans who are subject to the jurisdiction of some Christian prince; for the Christian slaves of such men become free by this very fact, and consequently can desert their master — indeed, if they be unbelievers, they can flee to the Church, that they may become Christians and consequently free. For of these the laws speak: "But in regard to those unbelievers who are not temporally subject to the Church or her members, the Church has not laid down the aforesaid right, although she could of right do so. For she has God's authority, and unbelievers, by reason of their unbelief, deserve to lose power over the faithful, who are translated into the sons of God. But this the Church does not do, in order to avoid scandal," says St. Thomas, II II, Question X, article 10.
Secondly, others — not without good reason — explain it likewise thus: "Do not become slaves of men," namely so as, by serving men, to neglect the service of God. For those become slaves of men who chiefly have regard to men, who flatter them even when they do evil, and obey and serve them in all things, even when they command sins. So St. Chrysostom and Jerome on Ephesians 6. For thus the Apostle, in Ephesians 6, instructs slaves to serve their masters not as men, but as the Lord, and for the Lord's sake.
Verse 24. LET EACH ONE, BRETHREN, REMAIN IN THAT IN WHICH HE WAS CALLED, BEFORE GOD — as if to say: Nevertheless let each one remain in his own state, whether of master or of slave, in which he was called and came to Christianity.
Note the phrase "before God" — namely, the God whom he serves and to whom he cleaves in Christianity and in the Church — as if to say: In the same state in which he was called and converted, let each one remain in Christianity and in the service of God, lest the Gentiles complain that through Christianity slaves become restless and aspire to liberty.
Verse 25: Concerning Virgins I Have No Commandment of the Lord; But I Give Counsel
Namely, that they should remain virgins, and serve God in virginity. I GIVE COUNSEL — that they do so. See Canon 38. This is the fifth question of the Corinthians: whether virgins in Christianity ought to remain virgins. Paul replies that by the law of Christ virginity is enjoined upon no one, but is recommended to all.
From this passage is proved that common opinion of the Fathers, by which they assert that celibacy is within our power, provided we ask it of God, strive toward it with heroic fortitude, and cooperate with God's grace through the due means — so that anyone, if he so wills, can live celibate without a spouse, however inclined to lust he may be by nature or habit. Thus Tertullian teaches, in his book On Monogamy, near the end; Chrysostom, Origen, and Jerome on Matthew 19; Nazianzen, Oration 13; Ambrose, On Widows; Augustine on Psalm 137: "He who exhorts you to vow," says Augustine, "Himself helps you to fulfill." And in Confessions Book VI, chapter XI: "You would surely give continence, were I to strike Your ears with inward groaning." The same thing Paul sufficiently intimates in this verse and in verse 7, where he commends virginity to all alike; but a thing is not commended, just as it is not commanded, except such as is within our power — that is, except such as we can do with the grace of God, which God has prepared for us and offers, if we implore it and are willing to cooperate with it.
Christ teaches the same thing in Matthew 19, where, when the Apostles said that, on account of the burdens and difficulties of matrimony, it was not expedient to marry, Christ, approving this, first added: "Not all receive this saying" — in Greek οἱ χωροῦσιν — which Origen and Nazianzen, in Oration 31 On the Three Kinds of Eunuchs, render as "not all are capable," understanding by "capacity" a natural propensity to chastity, which not all possess. But others, more aptly, generally render τὸ οὐ χωροῦσιν as: as vessels they do not receive into themselves, they do not approve, do not grasp, do not embrace chastity, since it is difficult.
Hence, secondly, Christ adds: "There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs," namely, who by their own free will have made themselves chaste, and have confirmed this by a perpetual vow. For this is what the word "eunuch" signifies — namely, a moral incapacity; the word "have made themselves eunuchs" signifies the same. Otherwise Christ would rather have said: "There are those who castrate themselves, or strive to castrate themselves." So St. Jerome, on the same passage; Epiphanius, Heresy 58; Fulgentius, On the Faith to Peter, chapter III; Augustine, On Holy Virginity, chapter XXX.
Thirdly, Christ adds that these eunuchs castrated themselves thus, not on account of the troubles of married life, nor even for the sake of the Gospel — that they might better preach it, as the heretics twist these words of Christ — but for the sake of "the kingdom of heaven," namely, that they might merit it. So Origen, Hilary, Chrysostom, Euthymius on the same passage, and St. Augustine, chapter XXIII, On Holy Virginity.
Finally Christ concludes by saying: "He who is able to receive it, let him receive it." These are the words of one exhorting and rousing to heroic virtue, as well as to an illustrious reward. By these words, then, Christ proposes to all the counsel of chastity, as a thing exceedingly heroic and exceptional. "Christ does not say," remarks Chrysostom, "that not all are able, but rather not all receive it," that is, all indeed are able to receive it, but nevertheless not all wish to receive it; and Jerome says: "To these, he says, it has been granted by God to castrate themselves, who sought, who willed, who labored that they might receive it."
You will say: How then does Christ say: "He who can receive it, let him receive it?" For by these words He signifies that not all can receive this. I reply, "who can" only signifies that this thing is arduous and difficult, as if to say: He who wishes to do violence to himself, who wishes with all his strength to strive for so arduous a thing, let him receive and grasp it. So that man in the Comic poet: "I cannot, mother," he says, "take this wife." "I cannot," that is, "I will not," because it is difficult for me, because this wife does not please me; and so in Scripture that which is difficult is often called impossible. Again, not all are able to be continent by proximate power, yet they can by remote power; because they can pray, and by their prayer and cooperation produce in themselves the proximate power of being continent.
Although therefore not all have the gift of continence by which they actually live continently, just as not all the just have the gift of perseverance by which they actually persevere in grace: nevertheless, just as all the just have the gift of perseverance by which they are able to persevere if they will; so all are able to have the gift of continence, if namely they ask the strength for this from God, and cooperate with God's grace through the requisite means. It is otherwise with the gift of prophecy and other gratuitously given graces, which we often cannot obtain either by prayer or by working with them. Yet because some, by nature and habit prone to lust, do not have such spirits, nor apply such heroic effort and constancy as with God's grace they could, but easily allow themselves to be drawn away by nature and habit, so that they succumb to venereal temptation; hence for such weak persons it is better to enter matrimony: "For it is better to marry than to burn." So the Apostle, verses 2, 5, and 9.
AS HAVING OBTAINED MERCY FROM THE LORD, THAT I MAY BE FAITHFUL — I counsel virginity, he says, as one who has been mercifully taken up to the grace of the Apostolic office among the Gentiles, that I may faithfully counsel them: so Ambrose, Anselm, Theodoret, as if to say: The more unworthy I was beyond the other Apostles, the greater the grace and mercy by which I was called to the apostolate, so much the more does it become me to be faithful in it, and faithfully to counsel those to whom I was sent by Christ as an Apostle.
Verse 26: I Think Therefore That This Is Good
This, namely virginity. So St. Ambrose and others. Or more aptly, this, namely that they should be and remain virgins, as I said in the preceding verse.
ON ACCOUNT OF THE PRESENT NECESSITY — of evangelizing and traveling about the whole world, some say: for this with a wife and many children would have been difficult. But Paul does not write these things to Apostles or Evangelists, but to the citizens of Corinth. Hence others take "necessity" as that of persecutions and flights in the primitive Church: for a virgin could easily, but those married only with difficulty — being burdened with wife and offspring — escape the tyrants. Then therefore on account of these dangers and flights it was better to be celibate than married. So the heretics.
But Calvin attacks this: for he himself confesses that the Apostle counsels this — namely virginity and celibacy — for all ages, even peaceful ones and ours, throughout the now-Christian world; therefore Calvin understands by "necessity" the various unrests and afflictions by which the Saints are agitated in this life, on account of which celibacy is rather to be counseled than matrimony. But this also is too remote and too general.
I say therefore: "This pressing necessity" is that which the Apostle determines and explains in what follows, verses 28 and 29, and it is twofold.
For which note that the Greek ἐνεστῶσαν signifies two things: First, pressing, that is, present necessity. For so Paul opposes ἐνεστῶτα καὶ μέλλοντα, present things to future, Rom. VIII, 38, and 1 Corinth. III, 22; and to the Greeks ἐνεστὼς is the present tense. Second, properly ἐνεστὼς, that is pressing, imminent, insistent, urgent, incumbent necessity. Both significations fit here. Again "necessity" to the Hebrews is the same as anguish, affliction, tribulation, and whatever constricts, distresses, binds man. Hence the Psalmist: "From necessities," that is from anguishes, "deliver me." And so the Apostle often calls his anguishes "necessities."
Firstly therefore, this pressing necessity is the imminent and incumbent difficulty of matrimony, the urgent trouble, vexation, and affliction of married life, namely the burdens of the womb, pains of childbirth, raising of children, cares, fears, jealousies, quarrels, household preparations; solicitude over wealth, kindred, and the cultivation and increase of station; the husband's domination, anger, drunkenness, prodigality, poverty, bereavements, and from these the perpetual distraction of mind and occupation about these matters. For explaining these in verse 28, he calls it the "tribulation of the flesh," which he opposes to the pleasure of marriage. So Ambrose, Anselm, Chrysostom, Theophylact.
Secondly, more simply and plainly: "The pressing necessity," or, as Erasmus, Vatablus, and others render, "the present necessity," is, as the Syriac has, אנקא necessity, ananki desabna, necessity of time, that is the anguish of the present life, which presses and impends upon us and our life, and constrains and urges it to hasten toward death and eternity. "Therefore the pressing necessity" is the brevity of the time given us for the acquisition of eternity; which therefore must be given not to the world, not to a spouse, but to the soul and to God. So Chrysostom, Anselm, and St. Jerome, book I Against Jovinian: "This necessity, he says, is that of dying soon," as if Paul were saying: In this brief life there is the necessity of pleasing God, and earnestly preparing one's sustenance and necessities — namely good works — that thence we may live blessed for all eternity. Therefore I counsel virginity: for this to God alone can devote attention, since the married are distracted by the burdens of marriage: as the ant gathers grains all summer for winter, so you gather merits for eternity. For explaining this necessity in verse 29, he says: "This therefore I say, brethren: The time is short; it remains that they who have wives be as if they had none, etc., for the figure of this world passes away," as if to say: Do you court a bride, offspring, marital pleasures? do you gape after them, fix all your thoughts and cares upon them? do you strive to perpetuate family, name, lineage? do you heap up wealth, buy estates, build houses as if you were going to live here forever? Remember that saying of Horace:
The earth must be left, and home, and pleasing wife.
First, why do you weary yourself and torment yourself with labors? A brief pleasure, the renown of name and family — at what great pains do you purchase it? Why do you hope for long things? Brief and quick is whatever you see here, whatever you court; the present life is narrow and about to perish. From the course of ages and times, twenty or thirty years of your life have been assigned and circumscribed. Hear the Poet:
The brief sum of life forbids us to begin a long hope.
Secondly, imminent death urges you: toward it you run with swift course; judgment is at hand, eternity is at hand, an eternity, I say, long and never to be ended: God constrains you and compels you to prepare yourself for it and hasten.
Thirdly, God gave you this present life, this brief time, not that you should take pleasure here in marriage, not that you should establish a family, not that you should enjoy present things, not that you should fix your seat, as if going to remain here long or for ever; but only for this, that in it as in a stadium of virtues you might run to the goal and prize, to the blessed, I say, eternity; that to it you might direct and strain your eyes, your spirit, your mind; that you might fix this as the goal of all your actions. Wherefore though the world is full of madness, none is greater or more open than that it so neglects the highest and eternal things, and pursues the weak and transitory with such zeal, with so great a danger of eternal damnation.
Fourthly, daily think: So much of my life has already been taken away, perhaps not so much remains: as many days as I live, by so many am I constrained and urged toward death; what if today, what if tomorrow it overtakes me? Have I so lived that I do not hesitate to die? Have I prepared the foods, the merits, I say, of good works, by which I must live for all eternity? On this turns the hinge of your salvation: why then do you not bend your whole self to it?
Fifthly, why do you handle other things? Why do you divide your soul among wife, offspring, family, so that scarcely once a day do you think of God, of heaven? Why do you not gather all into that one thing that is necessary, that with Mary you may choose the best part? Why do you gape after gain, after wealth, after stations, after the joining of kindred? "O cares of men, O how much emptiness there is in things! Fool, this night they shall demand your soul of you; and the things which you have prepared, whose shall they be?" Forgetful sons will succeed you, for whom you sweated, labored, pawning your body to death, your soul to hell; you will leave these things to ungrateful heirs: if they were grateful, they could not free you from hell.
Sixthly, why do you not have mercy on your soul; why, I say, do you not take care of that one little soul of yours, which God gave you to tend and save? Why do you not call your spirit away from marriage, from spouse, from children; your thoughts from family, from business and matrimonial cares, which immerse you in earth and earthly things, distract and absorb you?
Seventhly, why do you not embrace the celibacy I urge? It will give you leisure for thinking, not how you may please the world, but how you may please God, how you may prepare for your journey to heaven, how you may compose and balance your accounts for the future judgment, how you may present yourself to God: namely it will give the faculty without impediment, freely and readily to serve the Lord; assiduously to entreat the Lord, that by persisting in prayers, fasts, and almsgivings you may merit equally to excel in heaven, in glory, and to assist as a neighbor to God, and most blessedly to enjoy Him for all eternity, where with Blessed Agnes in St. Ambrose, sermon 90, you may ever sing: "I am joined in heaven to Him whom on earth I loved with the whole intention of my soul." And: "I have despised the kingdoms of the world, and all their glory, for love of my Lord Jesus Christ, in whom I have believed, whom I have loved, in whom I have hoped."
Finally Maldonatus in the manuscript Notes: "On account of the pressing necessity," that is, he says, on account of the imminent end of the world, that, preparing ourselves for it, we may not be entangled in matrimony and earthly affairs. Hence, in verse 29, of it he says: "The time is short."
From what has been said the argument of Jovinian and Calvin falls: The Apostle, they say, opposes pressing or present to future; therefore, if celibacy is good only on account of the pressing necessity, it will not be good on account of the future reward.
I reply: the antecedent is false; rather, as I said, the pressing or present necessity is that which urges us, through celibacy in this brief life, to think and to prepare for ourselves eternal reward. Indeed St. Jerome, book I Against Jovinian, says: The Apostle adds present to future, lest anyone think that virgins are happier indeed as to spiritual things, but not as to carnal, since in both they surpass the married, and in both lives, both in time and in eternity. The same St. Augustine teaches and expressly refutes this argument of Calvin, in his book On Holy Virginity, chap. XXII, vol. VI, and the Apostle here in verses 33 and 35, as I shall there show more fully.
BECAUSE IT IS GOOD FOR A MAN SO TO BE. — This "because" does not give a cause; for it would render the cause of itself, as if saying: "It is good, because it is good." Therefore the word "because" looks back and recalls what preceded; for the Apostle, by epanalepsis, repeats what he said, in order to drive it home. As if to say: I think it good to remain a virgin on account of the pressing necessity; because, that is, that, I say, it is good for a man so to be, namely in virginity.
IF A VIRGIN MARRIES (one fitted, namely, to marry, that is free and unmarried, and not consecrated to God. So Theodoret, Theophylact, Photius, and St. Jerome above: such a one in marrying) HAS NOT SINNED — see what is said on verse 2.
YET SUCH SHALL HAVE TRIBULATION OF THE FLESH — opening for themselves through the bond of marriage a workshop of sorrows, says St. Basil, On Holy Virginity, near the end. The Apostle calls "tribulation of the flesh" the burdens of marriage, of children, and of family, which I have already mentioned, of which St. Augustine, On Holy Virginity, chap. XVI; St. Ambrose, book I On Virgins; and St. Jerome, Against Jovinian. "Tribulation of the flesh" he therefore calls that which is concerned with the flesh and carnal things, and which afflicts the flesh. He opposes this to the pleasure of the flesh, which is in marriage; for that pleasure is so oppressed and crushed by this tribulation, as far heavier, that it is scarcely felt. For the pleasure that is in the marital act is very vile, brutal, making a man epileptic, as Alexander the Great used to say, and full of shame, and passes in a moment, and is at once compensated by innumerable inconveniences.
For soon after conception come distastes, sleeplessness, dizziness, melancholies, anxieties of the chest, absurd cravings, and disturbance of the entire nature. There follow the most bitter pains of childbirth, which bring death to many. Secondly, the offspring once born must immediately and continually each day be cleansed, fed, swaddled, clothed, laid down, rocked in the cradle that it may sleep, taken up that it may suckle, arranged so that it may relieve itself, constantly soothed with words and song lest it cry; so that mothers are occupied whole days and nights about their infants, nor can scarcely do or think of anything else. I pass over the filth, stench, wailings, illnesses, dangers both of mothers and of little ones.
Thirdly, the offspring grown larger brings greater cares and sorrows. How great a sorrow if it should chance to be extinguished, if dragged into shameful deeds and disgraces by bad company? if it shows itself rebellious to parents? if it consumes the parents' goods in dice and cups? if it involves itself in an ill-considered marriage? For though parents be most holy, yet it often happens that the children are wicked, and so most grievously torment the parents. The examples are in Adam and Cain, in Noah and Ham, in Abraham and Ishmael, in Isaac and Esau, in Jacob and Reuben, and in nearly all his other sons, in David, Amnon and Absalom, and very many others.
On account of these burdens of spouses, and this tribulation, St. Augustine following St. Ambrose was never willing to recommend a spouse and marriage to anyone. "And these three things he warned the man of God to observe, says Possidonius in the Life of St. Augustine, chap. XXVII: first, that he should never seek a wife for anyone; secondly, that he should not commend one who wished to enter the army for this purpose; thirdly, that being asked in his country he should not go to a banquet; and he gave the cause of each: of the first, lest while spouses quarrel among themselves, they curse him through whom they were joined; of the second, lest the one commended to the army doing wrong should attribute his guilt to his backer; of the third, lest by frequent attendance at banquets in his country, the measure of temperance be lost."
BUT I SPARE YOU — that you should choose the state of tribulations, namely marriage, I permit, I do not withdraw. So Ambrose.
Verse 29: This I Say, Brethren: The Time Is Short
ὁ καιρὸς συνεσταλμένος, the time, that is the span of our life, has been contracted, and as Tertullian reads, "is collected together": that we may consider that here we are not as residents to enjoy wives and any kind of present things; but that as pilgrims we ought to use these things for a brief time, that we may tend toward that glorious city, in which as eternal citizens we shall be enrolled. Ambrose takes this time more broadly, namely the time of this present age, as if to say: All this time is brief, and the day of judgment is at hand; therefore let us not linger over the temporary pleasures of the age, but let us prepare ourselves for the judgment.
IT REMAINS THAT THEY WHO HAVE WIVES BE AS THOUGH THEY HAD NONE — that, namely, they should not be greatly affected by matrimonial affairs, that they should fix their soul, mind, and love more on the Lord than on their wives. So Ambrose and Anselm. St. Augustine adds, in book I On the Lord's Sermon on the Mount, chap. XIV, at the end, that with mutual consent, if it can be done, they should preserve chastity.
Verse 30: And They Who Buy, As Though They Possessed Not
Namely as perpetual owners, but as usufructuaries for life. For Paul here forbids the immoderate use of and affection for things, as if we did not possess them, but were possessed by them, namely that we should not set our heart on momentary things, nor cling with excessive affection to any creature so fleeting. So Anselm. Beautifully St. Augustine, tractate 40 on John, prescribing to any rich man the manner of using money: "Use," he says, "money as a traveler in a stable (in a lodging: hence formerly the host was called stabularius, as is plain in Luke X, 35) uses the table, the cup, the pitcher; intending to leave them, not to remain."
This very thing, that God might effectively teach the Jews, He instituted the fiftieth year of jubilee, and decreed that in that year all fields and estates bought up should return without payment from the buyer to the former lord, who had sold them, the cause of which sanction He gives in Leviticus XXV, 23, saying: "The land also shall not be sold in perpetuity: for it is mine, and you are strangers and tenants of mine. Wherefore the whole region of your possession shall be sold under the condition of redemption," as if to say: I, God, transcending on high, have a true and proper dominion over your land; wherefore it is lawful for me to attach what conditions I will to its sale, especially since I introduced you into it as strangers and tenants, and wish you always to remain such. Wherefore I will and ordain that whatever possessions, in the year of jubilee, return to the former owners, and this for this cause: that you may know, says Philo, On the Cherubim, that God alone is properly the lord and possessor of all things; but men have only the usufruct of them for life, not dominion. "Hence it appears, says Philo, that we use possessions belonging to others: we possess neither glory, nor riches, nor honors, nor empires, nor anything else, whether of body or of soul as our own, as if these were of our right and dominion; but we have only the usufruct of them while we live here."
Verse 31: And They Who Use This World, As Though They Used It Not
ὡς μὴ καταχρώμενοι, that is as not abusing it, namely not adhering excessively to its use. Our Interpreter took the compound verb in the Greek for the simple, as the Greeks often do: as not abusing, that is, as not using, namely with firm and tenacious use, which is to abuse. For one must use a thing as it is. The world therefore, being fluid, must be used fluidly and as if in passing, as if you did not use it: but if you wish to cling to the world, you abuse it; because you use a fluid thing as if it were not fluid, but firm, solid, and stable. For abuse, says Theophylact, is superfluous use, exceeding the measure and nature of the thing. Hence the Syriac translates: "those who use this world, let them not use it beyond just use." Thus to abuse, for to use fully, is taken in chap. IX, verse 18. Wherefore St. Basil in his Brief Rules, question 70: "Abuse," he says, "the Apostle condemns when he says: As using this world, not as abusing it. For the measure of use, the unavoidable necessity itself of things pertaining to use defines. But whoever goes beyond necessity has the disease either of intemperate desire of having, or of the lust of pleasure, or of vain glory."
Excellently St. Leo, sermon 5 On the Fast of the Seventh Month: "In the love of God," he says, "nothing is excessive; but in the love of the world, all things are harmful. And therefore one must inseparably cling to eternal goods, but use temporal ones in passing, so that for us pilgrims, hastening to return to our homeland, whatever from the prosperities of this world meets us, may be the provision of the journey, not the allurement of a dwelling. Therefore the Apostle preaches saying: The time is short; it remains that those who have wives be as though they had none, etc. For the figure of this world passes away. But what allures by appearance, by abundance, by variety, is not easily declined, unless in that beauty of visible things the Creator rather than the creature is loved."
The same, sermon 11 On Lent, having cited these words of the Apostle, adds: "For blessed is the mind which passes through the times of its pilgrimage with chaste sobriety, and in those things through which it must walk does not remain, so as to be a guest rather than mistress of earthly things, neither resting on human affections, nor failing the divine promises."
THE FIGURE OF THIS WORLD PASSES AWAY. — "Passes away"; the Greek παράγει can also be translated "deceives" or "leads astray," the figure and appearance of the world. For, as Augustine says, epistle 39 to Licentius: "The chains of this world have true harshness, false pleasantness; certain sorrow, uncertain pleasure; harsh fear and timorous rest; a thing full of misery, an empty hope of blessedness: would you thrust into these your hands and feet?" The same in sermon 23 On the Words of the Apostle: "Temporal goods," he says, "do not cease to inflame us when coming, corrupt us when arriving, torment us when passing away: when desired they burn, when obtained they grow cheap, when lost they vanish." And St. Bernard: "Do not," he says, "love things present, which when possessed burden, when loved defile, when lost torment."
Again St. Gregory, book VI, epistle to Andrew: "Our life," he says, "is like one sailing: for he who sails, stands, sits, lies, goes forth, because he is led by the impulse of the ship. So therefore are we also, who whether waking, or sleeping, or silent, or speaking, or walking, or willing or unwilling, through the moments of time daily tend to the end. When therefore the day of our end shall come, where for us shall be everything that now with so much care is sought and with anxiety is gathered? Therefore neither honor, nor riches, are to be sought, which are let go. But if we seek goods, let us love those which we shall have without end: but if we fear evils, let us fear those which the reprobate endure without end."
Hence to the same Andrew he soon counsels in the brief time of this life and pilgrimage "to give time to sacred readings, to meditate heavenly words, to inflame oneself in the love of eternity, to do good works of earthly things according to one's strength, and to hope for the perpetual kingdom in their reward. Now thus to live is already to have a part in the life of eternity." St. Hilarion, says St. Jerome in his Life, "exhorted each one to pass beyond the figure of the world, and that to be the true life which is purchased by the inconvenience of the present life."
Figure. — In Greek σχῆμα, that is the habit, appearance, and fleeting state of the world. So Ambrose and Anselm. Note: the Apostle does not attribute "form" to the world: for this is more solid and constant; but figure, which is mobile, fleeting, evanescent, as I said on Rom. XII, 2. "Do not," says Anselm, "love the world steadfastly, when it which you love cannot stand; in vain do you fix your heart as it were permanently, while He whom you love flees." If the world flees, then also marriages and all things that are confined within the world.
This day passes away; the origin of the next is unknown, whether labor or rest: so passes the glory of the world.
And as our Lipsius, a man as wise as he was loftier than man and all human things, when we often and familiarly conversed about the vanity of the sciences and of human things, with deep feeling of soul used to say, which after long premeditation he ordered to be inscribed on his tomb:
Do you wish me to speak with you in a loftier voice? All human things — smoke, shadow, vanity, and the image of a stage, and, to sum it up in a word, NOTHING.
For the world is like a stage on which the drama of this life is played out; men are characters, they enter, they depart; the place of the theater is the earth. "A generation passes," says Ecclesiastes, chap. I, verse 4, "and a generation comes; but the earth stands forever." While they are on the stage there are doors: for those entering, birth, for those departing, sunset, that is death; each here receives his clothes on loan: he who plays the king will not carry away with him the purple which he wore here. This comedy ends quickly. Hear Seneca:
The first hour that gave life, plucked it.
We commonly say: Tell me, O farm, O house, O prebend, O money, how many lords have you had and how many still will you have? Tell me, where is that Solomon, the wisest king, where Samson the strongest, where Absalom the most beautiful, where Cicero the most eloquent, where Aristotle the most acute? So many illustrious nobles, so many spans of affairs, so many faces of Prelates, so many strong limbs, so many princes of the world, so great power? in the twinkle of an eye all are shut up. O food of worms! O mass of dust! O dew, O vanity, why are you so puffed up! What do you seek? What do you court? Happy is he who has been able to despise the world!
Most beautifully and most briefly Nazianzen, in his treatise On the Roads of Life, which is at the end of his works, describes the fleeting vanity of each thing that is in this world, touching them point by point: "Who am I?" he says, "whence have I come into life? who again, after I shall, having been kept for a while in the bosom of the earth, return from dust to life, shall I be? Where finally will God place me? for many are the toilsome roads of this life, nor is there any good among men which does not have some vice mixed in. And would that the evils did not also claim a greater part for themselves! Riches are snares, and the haughtinesses of lofty thrones and dignities are mere dreams. To be subject to the rule of another is grievous and troublesome; poverty a snare; beauty moreover brief, and like a flash of lightning; youth nothing other than the heat of time; gray hair the sad sunset of life. Words are truly winged, glory is air, nobility old blood, strength shared with boars, satiety wanton, matrimony a chain, abundance of children mother of necessary cares, childlessness a disease, the forum a school of vices, rest weakness, the arts of abject men, foreign bread narrow, agriculture labor, the greater part of sailors are in hell, one's own country is one's own pit, a foreign region a reproach."
Then embracing all together, he proposes their vanity to be considered with many apt similes, and says: "In short, all things to mortals are toilsome, all human things are fear, laughter, down, shadow, dew, breath, flight, vapor, dream, wave, ship, footstep, breeze, dust, a kind of orb rolling everything in perpetual revolution like itself, now standing, now spinning, now slipping, now fixed by the seasons of the year, days, nights, labors, death, sorrows, pleasures, diseases, calamities, and prosperous successes. But now not without great wisdom has this been ordained by You, O Christ, that all things of this life should be uncertain and unstable: namely that we may be inflamed with the love and desire of firm and stable things, and that we may learn to tear the mind away from the thinking of foolish flesh, and to preserve pure and entire that image which we have received from God, to lead a life alien to this life, and finally, by exchanging this world for another world, to bear with brave spirit all the difficulties and troubles of this life."
Aptly also St. Augustine, on Psalm CIX at that passage: "He shall drink of the torrent in the way." "The torrent," he says, "is the flowing of human mortality: for as a torrent is gathered from the waters of rain, overflows, roars, runs, and in running runs down, that is, finishes its course: so is all this course of mortality. Men are born, live, die, and as others die, others are born. What here is retained? what here does not run away? what does not, as if collected from rain, go into the sea, into the abyss?"
This figure of the world makes it masked and disguised. Therefore as if someone were selling you a horse decked with trappings, you would take off the trappings and consider the body and limbs of the horse before buying it: so also do here. The world sells you masked honors, disguised pleasures, decked-out riches: take away the trappings, take away the masks: consider what lies within: you will see that everything is meager, slight, empty.
But pathetically the Wise One, chap. V, verse 8, describing the lament and late repentance of the impious for this fondly-loved vanity, compares it to a thin shadow, a courier running by, a ship cutting the sea, a bird flying across, an arrow shot forth, down, foam, smoke, wind, the lodging of a single day.
St. Jerome explains these very things more at length, in his epistle to Cyprian, expounding those words of Psalm LXXXIX, A thousand years before Your eyes are as yesterday which is past: "Compared with eternity," he says, "the length of all times is brief." And below, explaining verse 6, In the morning may he pass like the grass, in the morning may he flower and pass, in the evening may he fall, harden, and dry up: "For as in the morning," he says, "the grass, blossoming with its flowers, delights the eyes of those who contemplate it, and gradually withering loses its beauty, and is turned into hay, which must be threshed: so all the appearance of men blossoms in infancy, flowers in youths, flourishes in men of perfect age; and suddenly while it knows not, the head grows white, the face is wrinkled, the skin previously stretched is contracted, and at the extreme end, which here is called evening, that is in old age, it can scarcely be moved: so that one is not recognized as he formerly was, but is almost transformed into another: and finally, as Symmachus translates that Psalm LXXXIX, verse 10, we are suddenly cut down, and we fly away."
Verse 32: But I Would Have You Without Solicitude
I should wish, see what is said on verse 7, and consequently to live in virginity and celibacy.
Verse 33: He Who Is With a Wife, Is Solicitous How He May Please His Wife
A woman, says Plautus, and a ship are never adorned enough: he therefore who seeks work, let him take a wife, and equip a ship.
AND HE IS DIVIDED — namely distracted into many cares, so that he cannot give himself wholly to one Lord, but God claims one part, and the wife and children claim the other and the greater part. So Ambrose.
Note that the Greeks, Chrysostom, Œcumenius, Theophylact, Basil, and the Syriac join these with what follows, thus: μεμέρισται ἡ γυνὴ καὶ ἡ παρθένος, "the woman or wife and the virgin are divided," as if to say: The pursuits of the wife and of the virgin are different; or, as Chrysostom, leisure and business define and divide the virgin from the non-virgin: the virgin pursues leisure, the non-virgin business. But St. Jerome, book I Against Jovinian, asserts that this reading is not of Apostolic truth: and now the Greek and Latin distinguish otherwise, with the sense which I have already given.
Verse 34: And the Unmarried Woman and the Virgin Thinks Upon the Things That Are the Lord's, That She May Be Holy in Body and Spirit
μεριμνᾷ, anxiously meditates and cares. "Holy," that is pure and immaculate. "The virgin," says Œcumenius, "is holy in body, on account of chastity; but holy in spirit, on account of familiarity with God and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit."
Note here a most clear passage for the Evangelical counsels, and namely for virginity: for Paul here frequently commends and counsels this, as in verses 7, 8, 25, 26, 34, 35, 40. Hence Peter Martyr and Beza here confess that the keeping of virginity, not only for the avoiding of temporary cares and troubles, is better than matrimony, as Luther wished; but also that it has this advantage, that it is more apt for the worship of God. They add however that the same in itself is not the worship of God, or at least is not greater nor better than matrimony.
But it is certain that virginity in this state is in itself an illustrious virtue, by which God is honored and worshiped, far better and more excellent than matrimony, and merits far greater rewards, and so a proper "aureole" in heaven. I say, in this state: for in the state of innocence virginity would not have been a virtue — indeed, would not have existed, just as concupiscence would not. Now what I said is proven first, because the Apostle here teaches that virginity is holiness of body and spirit, and that through it we please God. For the sense is: As the married woman thinks how she may preserve and adorn herself beautiful, that she may please her husband; so the virgin thinks how she may preserve the integrity and holiness of body, that she may be chaste in body and mind, that thus she may please God (so Anselm, Theophylact, Œcumenius, Chrysostom, and others everywhere); and that she may adorn and increase this chastity by prayers and other virtues, the more to please God, as Ambrose suggests; therefore through virginal chastity the virgin pleases God, and so chastity and virginity itself is holiness: for so the Apostle here calls it; if virginity is holiness, surely it is also worship of God.
Secondly, in the following verse the Apostle calls celibacy "honorable," that is more honorable than matrimony: therefore celibacy is a virtue. For the proper object of virtue is the honorable good.
Thirdly, virginity and celibacy in themselves are a part of temperance and a heroic act of it, elicited namely from the highest chastity, fortitude, and struggle, and is the perfect bridling of concupiscence; and often is commanded by charity, religion, vow. Hence I argue thus: As concupiscence, especially of lust, is evil in itself, so to bridle it is in itself good and pleasing to God, and the more to bridle it, the more is it good, and the more pleasing to God; but virginity bridles concupiscence more, indeed wholly, since marriage indulges it: therefore virginity is a greater good, and more pleasing to God and better than matrimony; and this the Apostle expressly teaches, verse 38: "He who joins his virgin in matrimony," he says, "does well; and he who does not join, does better;" because evidently he performs the work of a better and more excellent virtue. Hence Fulgentius, epistle 3, chap. IV: "So much is virginity a virtue, that the virgin has received her name from virtue." And St. Jerome, book I Against Jovinian: "Virginity," he says, "is a victim of Christ."
Finally, this is expressly taught against Jovinian, Calvin, and the like by St. Ambrose, Augustine, Chrysostom, Athanasius, Basil, in the books which they wrote expressly to prove this matter, on virginity, and St. Thomas II II, Question CLII, and there the Scholastics and all Catholic Doctors.
Excellently St. Aldhelm, Bishop of the West Saxons, around the year of the Lord 680, vol. III of the Bibliotheca of the Holy Fathers, in his little book On the Praises of Virginity, chap. IX: "Since," he says, "there are three states in the Church, virginity, celibacy, and marriage, we have learned from angelic revelation, if account must be made of merits, that this order is to be established among these virtues, namely that virginity is gold, celibacy silver, marriage bronze: virginity riches, celibacy mediocrity, marriage poverty: virginity peace, celibacy redemption, marriage captivity: virginity sun, celibacy lamp, marriage darkness: virginity queen, celibacy lord, conjugal life handmaid." So he.
Tertullian also, book On Modesty: "Modesty," he says, "is the flower of morals, the honor of bodies, the foundation of holiness." Thus sex, not age, is the foundation of holiness, the prejudgment of every good mind: although rare, and scarcely perpetual, yet it will to some extent linger in the world, if discipline shall persuade, if censure shall constrain.
Thus St. Cecilia made her husband Valerian, his brother Tiburtius, and others not only Christians, but also virgins and martyrs. Hence the Church sings of her: "Lord Jesus Christ, sower of chaste counsel, receive the fruits of the seeds which Thou hast sown in Cecilia." And: "Cecilia Thy handmaid serves Thee diligently as a bee."
Fourth, that virgins are loved by Christ more than others; for Christ as a bridegroom loves virgins as His brides, as St. Ambrose teaches in book I On Virgins. Again, He loves them as His soldiers. Hence Ambrose in the same place: "This," he says, "is that heavenly warfare which the army of angels in their praises promised on earth." See about these soldiers St. Chrysostom, homily 71 on Matthew.
Fifth, that virgins are the noblest part of the Church. Hear St. Cyprian, in the book On the Discipline and Habit of Virgins: "Now we have a discourse to address to virgins, for whom, the more sublime their glory, the greater also is the care. They are the flower of the ecclesiastical seed, the beauty and ornament of spiritual grace, a joyful disposition, the whole and uncorrupted work of praise and honor, an image of God reflecting the holiness of the Lord, the more illustrious portion of Christ's flock." And St. Jerome, book II Against Jovinian: "By virgins," he says, "and the continent, as by the most beautiful gems, the necklace of the Church is adorned." And Ecclesiasticus, chapter xxvi: "All weighing," he says, "is not worthy of a continent soul" in marriage (for he is speaking of that); much more therefore of one wholly continent in celibacy.
Hence St. Athanasius, in the book On Virginity, teaches that virginity is a mark of the true religion and Church. For the true religion urges, embraces, and exalts virginity and celibacy: infidelity and heresy dissuade, reject, and depress them. And St. Ambrose, in the book On Widows: "Those," he says, "who venerate the adulteries and disgraces of their gods, established penalties for celibacy and widowhood, so that as rivals of crimes they might punish the pursuits of virtues."
Therefore heretics and infidels are not, nor can be, virgins: for without the grace of God (whose beginning is faith) it is impossible amid so many enticements and temptations of the flesh to preserve and protect virginity. Hence St. Athanasius in his Apology to the Emperor Constantius: "Nowhere else," he says, "is that holy and heavenly mandate of eternal virginity happily fulfilled, except only among Christians."
Sixth, that, as St. Cyprian says above, "marriages fill the earth, continence fills heaven"; and so, as St. Basil says, "virgins anticipate the glory of the resurrection." For in this, as Christ says, they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage.
Seventh, that virgins have in heaven an extraordinary reward and crown, and that they follow the Lamb wherever He goes, singing a new song, which no one else can sing. Apocalypse xiv, 3 and 4.
From these gather eight prerogatives of virginity and the celibate life. The first is, that it is an imitation of the angelic life and integrity. For the angels do not marry, but devote themselves wholly to God and serve Him: virgins do the same. Hear St. Athanasius, book On Virginity, near the end: "O virginity, unfailing wealth, unfading crown, temple of God, dwelling-place of the Holy Spirit, precious pearl, conqueror of death and hell, life of angels, crown of saints," etc. And St. Chrysostom, book On Virginity, chapter xi: "Virginity," he says, "surpasses marriage as much as heaven surpasses earth, as much as angels surpass men." And St. Augustine, book On Holy Virginity, chapter xiii: "Virginal integrity," he says, "is an angelic portion, and a meditation of perpetual incorruption in corruptible flesh."
Again, this is that new family of angels which Christ established on earth, as St. Jerome teaches, epistle 22 to Eustochium: "As soon," he says, "as the Son of God came upon the earth, He established a new family for Himself, so that He who was adored by angels in heaven might have angels on earth." See St. Fulgentius, epistle 3 to Proba, chapter ix.
The second is, that virginity is a holocaust, as St. Jerome says on Psalm xcv; for it consigns and consecrates to God and divine things the body, and with the body the mind: hence St. Ignatius, in his epistle to the Tarsians, calls virgins priests of Christ. "Those," he says, "who live in virginity, hold in honor, as priests of Christ." Hence St. Ambrose on Psalm cxviii, 5, calls virgins martyrs: for they often have a heavier struggle than the Martyrs, when they cut off the loves and vital concupiscences of the soul for God.
The third is, that the virgin enters a spiritual marriage with Christ, as I shall say in Epistle II, chapter xi, verse 2. The offspring of this marriage are not corporeal, but spiritual, namely first, works of virtues; second, alms and other offices of charity; third, holy examples, by which they bring more souls to the service of Christ, and so bear them to Christ.
Finally, "St. Martin, seeing a meadow, of which oxen had grazed down one part, pigs had rooted up the second, and a third part was unharmed, which bloomed as if painted with various flowers, said: The first part bears the likeness of marriage, which, grazed by cattle, although it has not entirely lost the grace of its herbs, yet retains no dignity of flowers. The second, which the unclean herd of pigs has dug up, presents the foul image of fornication. The third, which has felt no injury, displays the glory of virginity: hence it is luxuriant, fruitful with herbs, the fruits of hay abound in it, and beyond every appearance, distinguished with flowers, it shines as if adorned with sparkling gems." Thus Sulpitius, Dialogue 2, chapter xi.
The eighth, that virginity makes a man like God and the Holy Trinity, of which in the following verse. And all these things have place as much in virgins who live at home as in those who live in a monastery. For in the time of St. Paul and Ignatius there were as yet no monasteries. When therefore they themselves counsel and praise virginity, they counsel and praise that which was preserved at home. Thus Philip the deacon had at home four virgin daughters, Acts xxi, 9, who were also endowed with the prophetic spirit, as is said in the same place; and that as a reward of virginity, says St. Jerome to Demetrias. Philip the Apostle before his Apostolate begot three daughters, of whom two grew old in virginity, as Polycrates says in St. Jerome, book On Ecclesiastical Writers, on Polycrates. St. Thecla, by the exhortation of St. Paul, cultivated virginity, as St. Ambrose testifies, book II On Virginity. The same was cultivated by St. Iphigenia, daughter of a king, by the exhortation of St. Matthew, as Abdias testifies in his Life; and by St. Flavia Domitilla, daughter of Clement the Roman Consul, by the exhortation of St. Clement, with Bede as witness in the Martyrology, May 7; and by St. Pudentiana and Praxedes, daughters of Pudens the senator, and very many others. So that St. Ambrose, book III On Virgins, says, "more virgins are consecrated in the Eastern and African Churches than men are born in Milan and in Italy: nevertheless from this the human race is not diminished, but multiplied." The reason of this is, because God does not wish to be outdone in liberality: if parents themselves offer one or two children, He gives back eight or ten, granting fruitfulness and happy births and filling the house with His blessing. Thus to Hannah, in return for Samuel offered to Him, He gave back five other children. Thus to the rich who give alms God grants greater wealth and greater fertility to their fields, as St. Augustine says, sermon 219 On Time.
Verse 35: Moreover This I Speak for Your Profit
Namely for your greater perfection and progress in spirit and virtue, I counsel you to celibacy. NOT THAT I MAY CAST A SNARE UPON YOU — not that I wish to impose on you the necessity of containing yourselves, and to compel you to it. Thus Œcumenius, Theophylact, Chrysostom. For this precept would be a snare to those who can scarcely contain themselves, because it would rob them of the remedy of their incontinence, namely marriage, and would drive them into the sin of fornication. This is clear from what follows, for he opposes the snare, that is, a precept, to counsel, when he says: "But for that which is comely," namely exhorting you; "to the comely," that is, a more honorable and better condition of living in celibacy, as if to say: I say these things about the advantages of virginity, not to cast a snare, that is, as if commanding it, but as counseling it. Thus Theodore, Theophylact, Anselm, Œcumenius.
Wrongly therefore Peter Martyr and Bucer think this snare to be the necessity of a vow: for not the Apostle nor anyone else, but each one casts this on himself, when he voluntarily vows chastity: but he who voluntarily vows does no more cast a snare on himself than he who voluntarily binds himself in matrimony, and to some one spouse often troublesome and quarrelsome.
Add that vows are not undertaken except after experiment, and only after prior mature counsel and deliberation; as in monasteries a year of probation is given to novices, that they may explore their strength and deliberate whether they wish to vow or not. But if spouses had this year, that they might mutually prove themselves in it before marriage, I believe more would draw back, and yet, marriage now contracted, they are compelled to remain with a spouse often unknown, unexperienced, and ungrateful: why then should not those who, by a solemn promise made to God, have professed chastity, which they could and ought beforehand to have proved, be required to render the vows which they voluntarily vowed to the Lord their God?
Far truer is it that this dogma of Bucer and the Novatians is a snare, namely that chastity is impossible, and consequently that it is lawful to marry after vows. For by this snare many souls of the Religious, and indeed of the married, strangle themselves, so that they commit adultery, fornicate, and are damned: for when they persuade themselves that virginal or conjugal chastity is impossible, it is necessary that by this their persuasion and fantasy they be driven into adulteries and sacrileges.
THAT IT MAY GIVE YOU (you virgins) POWER TO ATTEND UPON THE LORD WITHOUT IMPEDIMENT. — In Greek πρὸς τὸ εὐπάρεδρον (Erasmus and Robert Stephanus read in the same sense εὐπρόσεδρον) τῷ Κυρίῳ ἀπερισπάστως, as if to say: For that which sits beside God undistractedly, or, that in celibacy you may always inseparably sit beside and cling to God. Thus Theophylact and Theodoret, namely "that you may have the power of constantly beseeching the Lord," as the Roman editions read. But the Plantinian and others elsewhere read, "of observing the Lord"; St. Gregory, part III of the Pastoral, admonition 38, reads "of serving the Lord." All these readings correspond to the Greek phrase already given: for both by beseeching, and by observing, and by service we cling to and sit beside God; and to all these celibacy provides great facility, as the Apostle here says. Thus Magdalene sitting at the feet of the Lord heard His word, Luke x, 39.
Secondly, St. Jerome, Against Jovinian, translates, "That makes one intently serve the Lord without any distraction"; for πάρεδρον means two things: first, to be a constant assessor; second, to be assiduous in something. Just as Socrates is said to have had his genius as a paredros, by whose counsel and admonition he did everything, and the magi on their rings, and the heresiarchs in fabricating their heresy, as Irenaeus teaches, book I, chapters ix and xx, the suggesters have demons as paredroi, that is, as those who insinuate; here, conversely, the chaste are called paredroi, that is, familiars and as it were assessors of God, as certain earthly angels, who because of their chastity always see the face of the Father. Hence the Fathers everywhere compare the chaste to angels. St. Bernard, epistle 42: "There is a difference," he says, "between the chaste man and the angel in felicity, not in virtue: the chastity of the angel is happier, that of man stronger." Climacus, step 15, and Basil, On True Virginity, say that we are made like God through chastity, and have an appearance of heavenly and divine incorruption. Indeed the Gentile Cato used to say our life would be like the life of the gods, if we could be without a wife: and so a wife is an evil, but a necessary one. In which Cato erred: for St. Paul teaches that through the grace of Christ neither marriage nor celibacy is necessary, but free to each.
Hence the blessed Thomas More, the martyr, when asked wittily and acutely why he had married so small a wife, replied that he had freely and prudently chosen the least of evils. Most truly the Wise Man, Wisdom vi, 20: "Incorruption," he says, "makes one near to God"; for, as Nazianzen says in his Carmen de virginitate, the Most Holy Trinity is the first Virgin, whom all virgins imitate:
The First (he says) Trinity is a Virgin; for the Son was born from a Father without beginning; for neither did the Father derive His origin from anyone.
And, as Ambrose says, book I On Virgins: "Virginity has summoned from heaven what it might imitate on earth. This, transcending clouds, air, angels, and stars, has found the Word of God in the very bosom of the Father. Elijah also, because he is found not to have been mingled with any desires of bodily intercourse, was therefore caught up by a chariot to heaven." And for this reason virgins were seen by St. John not on the mountain, but above Mount Sion, Apocalypse xiv, before the throne of God singing a new song, and following the Lamb wherever He goes. Hence also the celibate life is called as it were the heavenly life, and St. Jerome, book II Against Jovinian, at the end, considers this the true etymology of celibate (whatever Erasmus may there clamor against St. Jerome), and Caius the Jurisconsult, and recently Lipsius. "Caius," says Quintilian, book I, chapter x, "called them caelibes, as if caelites and caelestes, because they are free from the heaviest burden of marriage. For by continence we are gathered and brought back into one, from which we have flowed away into many." This those four heroines and queens, sisters of the Emperor Theodosius, both excellently understood and accomplished, among whom Pulcheria stood out, who vowed virginity to God, to whom blessed Cyril wrote a book On the Faith to the Queens, about whom Nicephorus, book XIV, chapter ii, page 612, volume I. And Nicephorus adds about these queens: "Long," he says, "by day and by night they celebrated God with hymns and praises: for they considered that the institute, on account of which they had embraced virginity, did not befit either sloth or idleness."
And from this it follows that celibacy is most apt for acquiring all wisdom: which both Aristotle and the Philosophers taught, and Cicero showed by deed; for when he had repudiated his wife Terentia, being asked why he did not marry another, he replied that he could not at the same time philosophize and attend to a wife: for the celibate, free from other cares, devotes himself entirely to wisdom. Again, he has a pure mind and one capable of wisdom. Third, by God, to whom he is familiar, he is wondrously illuminated. For since the chaste man is a paredros and assessor of God, as the Apostle here says, it follows that the chaste man is also an assessor of divine and eternal wisdom: for she is the paredros and assessor of God. "Give me, O Lord (says Solomon, Wisdom ix, 4), the assistress of Thy thrones (in Greek πάρεδρον, that is assistress), wisdom." Hence St. Jerome, book I Against Jovinian, asserts that the Sibyls because of their virginity obtained from God the gift of prophecy.
Hence wisdom and chastity as it were sisters embraced St. Gregory Nazianzen. For, as Rufinus narrates in the Prologue of his apology, and St. Aldhelm, On the Praises of Virgins, chapter xii: "When the blessed Nazianzen was at leisure for his studies at Athens, he saw in sleep two beautiful women sitting beside him on the right and left as he sat reading: at whom he, looking with a sterner eye out of an instinct of chastity, asked who they were and what they wanted; but they, embracing him more familiarly and ambitiously, said: Take it not amiss, young man, we are well known and familiar to you; for one of us is called wisdom, the other chastity, and we have been sent by the Lord to dwell with you, because you have prepared for us a joyful and clean dwelling in your heart." Behold for you the twin sisters chastity and wisdom.
Hence secondly, follows such great communication, familiarity, and protection of God and the angels with virgins, by which they in turn, as if paredroi, have preserved them unharmed and inviolate from all force and insolence of tyrants: of which St. Basil, On True Virginity, is a witness.
An illustrious example exists in the Life of St. Theophila, who, under the Emperor Maximian, condemned to the brothel, as she was being led there, prayed thus: "My Jesus, my love, my light, my spirit, my guardian of chastity and life, behold her who has been espoused to Thee, hasten lest the wolves tear Thy lamb; preserve, O Spouse, Thy bride; preserve my chastity, O fountain of chastity." Having therefore entered the brothel, she drew forth the book of the Gospels from her bosom, and read attentively: an angel was soon present, who first punished with death a wanton youth wishing to enter to her, the second with blindness, and others with various punishments, so that no one dared any longer to enter to her. But with lust turned into reverence, when several touched by religion had entered the place, they saw Theophila sitting modestly, and bending over the book; but a certain youth standing near her, of an ineffable light, and of incredible beauty, as it were emitting some lightning-shafts from his eyes; who at length leading Theophila out to the church, and placing her in the vestibule, having said "Peace be to you," departed, with the Gentiles astonished and exclaiming: Who is like the God of the Christians? Similar things are in the Life of St. Agnes, Cecilia, Lucy, and other virgins. And so this is wonderful and worthy of note in the life and martyrdom of the Holy Virgins, that, when most beautiful virgins were by the most impure tyrants, by promises, fear, and force solicited to defilement, indeed very often we read condemned by public judgment, yet none to have been violated, but all, with God and the angels as guardians, to have preserved their virginity, and so to have augmented it by martyrdom we behold.
Verse 36: If Any Man Think He Seem Dishonored Concerning His Virgin
εἰ δέ τις ἀσχημονεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν παρθένον αὐτοῦ, that is, if anyone thinks it unseemly, and that he and his daughter are despised among worldly men, says the Syriac: as if it were base and unbecoming, that that virgin should be more than fittingly past her prime, in Greek ὑπέρακμος, superaetanea, beyond marriageable age, and yet not be given to a husband, as if she let pass the flower of her age, or the age mature for marriage. Thus Theophylact and the Syriac.
AND IT MUST SO BE — and so the father rather thinks that it ought to be done, that he should give her in marriage to a husband, either because she herself does not wish to remain continent, or because he seeks lineage and offspring from her, or for other reasons.
LET HIM DO WHAT HE WILL — let him give the daughter in marriage if he wishes; or keep her a virgin, if he prefers that.
Note, this sentence of the Apostle does not mean that it is in the father's power to keep his daughter a virgin, even if she is unwilling; or that the father can give his daughter to the husband whom he himself pleases, even if the daughter does not consent to him; or that the daughter's consent to the husband does not suffice for matrimony, unless the father or guardian also consent to it, as the civil Laws have established, when they decreed that the marriages of children of families are void, unless he consent who has them in his power, as is found in the Institutes, On marriages, and the Digest, On the right of marriages. For the natural, divine, and canonical Law has decreed the contrary. The Apostle therefore here, and in verse 37, only intimates that it is advised and fitting, that parents, seeing in son or daughter a propensity to marriage, should as wiser persons, after the manner of the ancients, seek a suitable spouse for them, and that son and daughter ought in this matter to follow the counsel and will of their parents, if they wish prudently to consult their own good and that of the family, unless they bring a just excuse. Thus Abraham, Isaac, and Tobias designated brides for their sons, whom the sons, following the will and counsel of the parent, willingly embraced.
IF SHE MARRIES. — The Greek places a stop after "sins not," and for "let her marry" has γαμείτωσαν, let them be joined in marriage, namely if they choose and prefer it. He uses the plural, to comprise both the virgin and the suitor, whom he indicated as having committed something less honorable toward her, as is wont to happen with suitors and lovers: that this may go no further, he says γαμείτωσαν, that is, let them be coupled in marriage. Thus Maldonatus in his Notes.
Verse 37: For He Who Hath Determined in His Heart, Being Steadfast, Not Having Necessity, To Keep His Virgin, Doth Well
The "for" gives the reason for what he said: "Let him do what he will"; for whether she marries, he does not sin, or whether she does not marry, but is kept a virgin, he does well, indeed does better, both the father and the virgin daughter. Hence the Greek more clearly has ὃς δέ, but he who does not give in marriage, but keeps her a virgin, does well, as if to say: The former does not badly, but this one does well, indeed better.
NOT HAVING NECESSITY — to give the daughter in marriage because of lacking the gift of continence, say the heretics, as if to say: He who is compelled to give his daughter in marriage, because she lacks the gift of continence, if he keeps her a virgin, does badly: but he who is not compelled to give her, because the daughter has the gift of continence, if he keeps her a virgin, does well.
But they err, because the "not having necessity," like the "having power," is referred to "keeping the virgin," as if to say: He does well who keeps his daughter a virgin, unless he be compelled by necessity to keep her a virgin without marriage, on account of poverty, infamy, or because no one wants her as a spouse, or for other reasons. For this is of necessity, not of virtue: but it is of virtue, if no necessity compels, but piety impels, that a free will may choose virginity. Thus Chrysostom, Theophylact, Œcumenius.
AND HAVING POWER OF HIS OWN WILL — that the father may do what he wishes, that is, that he may be free to keep her a virgin, namely because the virgin consents to remain a virgin.
Note these words of the Apostle, and from them learn that man has free will, even in moral and supernatural things, as here is perpetual virginity. For the father cannot will it in the daughter, unless the daughter freely choose and embrace it.
It could secondly simply be taken thus, not having necessity, namely of a precept, but power of will, that is, free choice, that without sin he may choose what he wishes, as if to say: Virginity is not of precept, but of counsel; he therefore who wishes to keep his daughter a virgin, is compelled to it by no law; yet he does well, because he fulfills the counsel of Christ and mine.
Verse 39: But If He Die, He Is Dead
The death of the faithful is called sleep: for from it they will awake at the resurrection. Hence pious Christians, when someone has died, say he has fallen asleep in the Lord, that is, he is dead.
TO WHOM SHE WILL, BUT ONLY IN THE LORD. — The Greek Fathers thus take "in the Lord," as if to say: According to the law of God, which commands that you contract marriage with temperance, and for the sake of offspring, not of lust. Thus St. Basil, in his book On True Virginity: "What," he says, "is to marry in the Lord? not to be drawn as a vile slave to the pleasures of the flesh for intercourse, but to choose marriage with judgment and for the reason of a more convenient life. For this reason the Creator established the necessity of matrimony in nature."
Secondly, "in the Lord," that is religiously, with the fear of God and to the glory of the Lord: which will happen especially if she marries an upright and Christian man. Hence thirdly, properly to the mind of the Apostle, "in the Lord," that is, in the Lord's Church and in Christianity. "Let her marry" therefore "in the Lord," that is, let her marry a Christian man. See Canons 25 and 37. Thus Ambrose, Theodoret, Theophylact, Anselm, Sedulius, St. Thomas, Augustine, book I On Adulterous Marriages, chapter xxi.
Hence the Church afterwards entirely forbade, on account of the danger of perversion and of indecency, the marriage of a Catholic with a heretic woman, and made void the marriage of a Christian with a pagan woman: and it is a mortal sin to contract with a heretic, male or female. Except Germany, Poland, France, where heretics live mixed with Catholics; for there it is permitted, provided that the Catholic spouse is freely allowed both to remain in the faith without danger of perversion, and to educate the offspring in the same, as Thomas Sanchez teaches, disputation LXXII, number 3, volume II. But because this is done with difficulty, hence such marriages are everywhere to be avoided and dissuaded. Hence finally, against Tertullian, the Montanists, Novatian, it is clear that second nuptials are lawful.
Fourth, "let her marry in the Lord," that is according to the laws and rites of the Church, handed down by the Apostles themselves (who functioned in the place and authority of the Lord). The rites instituted by the Apostles, and received by the whole Church, are chiefly these: First, that the marriage be contracted in the presence of a priest legitimately deputed for it. "For it becomes," as St. Ignatius says to Polycarp, "both those marrying wives and those being married, that they be joined by the bishop's judgment, that the nuptials may seem to have been entered into according to the precept of the Lord, and not because of concupiscence." Second, that in the celebration of marriage the sacrifice of the Mass be offered. Third, that the contracting parties receive the Eucharist, etc. Hence Tertullian, book II To his Wife, at the end: "Whence," he says, "shall I suffice to recount the felicity of that marriage which the Church arranges, and the oblation (the sacrifice of the Mass) confirms, and which the angels (that is, the priests) seal and announce?"
Verse 40: But She Shall Be More Blessed
Both here in a quiet and holier life, and in the future: by greater happiness she will be more blessed and more glorious in heaven, says Ambrose. IF SHE SO REMAIN (separated in widowhood). — Hence is clear the counsel of widowhood, as better than marriage, and it is clear from what has been said and from the Fathers cited at verse 7. See St. Augustine, book On the Good of Widowhood, volume IV, and Ambrose, book On Widows, volume I.
AND I THINK THAT I ALSO HAVE THE SPIRIT OF GOD — namely the spirit of counsel, according to which I think I am faithfully recommending these things: thus Anselm and others.
Note the "and I," as if to say: Just as also other Apostles, so I too have the Spirit of God. He modestly interposes his authority, lest he seem to be saying and counseling these things by a human, not divine spirit. Second, St. Augustine notes, tractate 37 on John, that the "I think" is not of one doubting, but of one asserting and rebuking.