Opening the library…
To His Wife
Tertullian
If these things are so, it is certain that believers contracting
Let us now recount the other dangers or wounds (as I have said) to faith, foreseen by the apostle; most grievous not to the flesh merely, but likewise to the spirit too. For who would doubt that faith undergoes a daily process of obliteration by unbelieving intercourse? “Evil confabulations corrupt good morals;” how much more fellowship of life, and indivisible intimacy! Any and every believing woman must of necessity obey God. And how can she serve two lords—the Lord, and her husband—a Gentile to boot? For in obeying a Gentile she will carry out Gentile practices,—personal attractiveness, dressing of the head, worldly elegancies, baser blandishments, the very secrets even of matrimony tainted: not, as among the saints, where the duties of the sex are discharged with honour (shown) to the very necessity (which makes them incumbent), with modesty and temperance, as beneath the eyes of God.
Comp. de Pa., c. xii. (mid.), and the note there.
Comp. 1 Cor. v. 11.
The translator has ventured to read “die illo” here, instead of Oehler’s “de illo.”
1 Cor. iii. 16, comp. vi. 19.
1 Cor. vi. 15.
1 Cor. vi. 19, 20.
See the last reference, and Acts xx. 28, where the mss. vary between Θεοῦ and Κυρίου.
De proximo. Comp. de Pa., cc. v. and vii. “Deo de proximo amicus;” “de proximo in Deum peccat.”
Comp. b. i. c. viii. sub. fin., where Tertullian quotes the same passage, but renders it somewhat differently.
Comp. Matt. vi. 24; Luke xvi. 13.
Sæculares.