Chapter 16

Now, if in all cases he says it is best for a man thus to be; “Thou art joined to a wife, seek not loosing” (that you may give no occasion to adultery); “thou art loosed from a wife, seek not a wife,” that you may reserve an opportunity for yourself:  “but withal, if thou shalt have married a wife, and if a virgin shall have married, she sinneth not; pressure, however, of the flesh such shall have,”—even here he is granting a permission by way of “sparing them.”  On the other hand, he lays it down that “the time is wound up,” in order that even “they who have wives may be as if they had them not.”  “For the fashion of this world is passing away,”—(this world) no longer, to wit, requiring (the command), “Grow and multiply.”  Thus he wills us to pass our life “without anxiety,” because “the unmarried care about the Lord, how they may please God; the married, however, muse about the world, how they may please their spouse.”  Thus he pronounces that the “preserver of a virgin” doeth “better” than her “giver in marriage.”  Thus, too, he discriminatingly judges her to be more blessed, who, after losing her husband subsequently to her entrance into the faith, lovingly embraces the opportunity of widowhood.  Thus he commends as Divine all these counsels of continence:  “I think,” he says, “I too have the Spirit of God.”

Who is this your most audacious asserter of all immodesty, plainly a “most faithful” advocate of the adulterous, and fornicators, and incestuous, in whose honour he has undertaken this cause against the Holy Spirit, so that he recites a false testimony from (the writings of) His apostle?  No such indulgence granted Paul, who endeavours to obliterate “necessity of the flesh” wholly from (the list of) even honourable pretexts (for marriage unions).  He does grant “indulgence,” I allow;—not to adulteries, but to nuptials.  He does “spare,” I allow;—marriages, not harlotries.  He tries to avoid giving pardon even to nature, for fear he may flatter guilt.  He is studious to put restraints upon the union which is heir to blessing, for fear that which is heir to curse be excused.  This (one possibility) was left him—to purge the flesh from (natural) dregs, for (cleanse it) from (foul) stains he cannot.  But this is the usual way with perverse and ignorant heretics; yes, and by this time even with Psychics universally:  to arm themselves with the opportune support of some one ambiguous passage, in opposition to the disciplined host of sentences of the entire document.

1 Cor. vii. 1–3.