A Legacy Before the Inheritance

I have thought it right, my dearest fellow servant in the Lord, to provide even now for the course you will have to take after I have gone from this world, if I am called before you — and to entrust the keeping of that provision to your good faith. In worldly matters we are active enough, and we want the interests of each of us looked after. If we draw up wills for things like that, why should we not take far more thought, in things divine and heavenly, for what comes after us? Why not leave a legacy to be received before the inheritance is divided — the legacy, I mean, of a warning and a demonstration about the bequests that are set aside for us out of our immortal goods, out of the estate that is heaven? Only, may God grant that you are able to take this trust of my advice in full. To him be honor, glory, renown, dignity and power, now and to the ages of ages. [a]

So the instruction I give you is this: with all the steadiness you can manage, after I am gone, give up marriage. Not that you will do me any favor by it — except that you will be doing yourself good. For Christians, once they have left this world, no restoration of marriage is promised on the day of the resurrection: they will have been carried over into the condition and holiness of angels. So on the day of the resurrection no anxiety arising out of the flesh’s jealousy will wound any one of the many husbands of that woman they chose to put forward as having been married to seven brothers one after another; and there is no husband waiting there to put her to shame. The question the Sadducees raised has given way before the Lord’s verdict. Do not imagine that I am instilling the counsel of lifelong widowhood into you this early because I am suspicious of the pain of being slighted, and mean to keep the whole devotion of your body for myself to the end. On that day there will be no resuming between us the disgrace of that pleasure. God promises his servants no such frivolities, no such impurities. But whether the advice we are giving will do you good, or any other woman at all who belongs to God, we will take our time and treat at length.

We certainly do not forbid the joining of man and woman. God blessed it as the seedbed of the human race and devised it for filling the earth and furnishing the world, and so he permitted it — but one at a time. For Adam was Eve’s one husband, and Eve was his one wife: one woman, one rib. We grant that among our ancestors, and among the patriarchs themselves, divine law allowed not only marrying but the multiplying of wives. There were concubines in those days too. But although the church did come in, figuratively, in the synagogue, still — to take it plainly — certain things had to be instituted that would afterward deserve to be either lopped off or altered. For the Law was to come in after them. And that was not enough either: it was fitting that the causes for making good the Law’s deficiencies should run ahead of the one who was to supply them. And so the Law in its turn had to be succeeded by the Word of God, bringing in the circumcision of the spirit. That is why, through the wide license of those days, the materials for later corrections were furnished in advance — the materials out of which the Lord, by his Gospel, and then the apostle, in the last days of the Jewish age, either cut off what was excessive or brought the disorder under rule. [e]

But do not think my reason for setting out all this beforehand — the liberty granted to the old days and the restraint imposed on the later one — is to lay a foundation for teaching that Christ came to dissolve wedlock and do away with marriage, as though from that point onward I were laying down an end to marrying. Let that be the business of the people who, among the rest of their perversities, teach that the “one flesh” is to be split in two — denying the one who, after borrowing the female out of the male, recombined between themselves, in the reckoning of marriage, the two bodies taken out of a partnership in one and the same material. In fact there is nowhere at all where we read that marriage is prohibited; naturally enough, on the ground that it is “a good thing.” [h]

What is better than this “good,” however, we learn from the apostle, who permits marrying but prefers abstinence — the one on account of the traps that temptations set, the other on account of the straits of the times. Now by looking into the reason given for each proposition it is easily seen that the ground on which the power of marrying is conceded is necessity; and whatever necessity grants, by her very nature she cheapens. In fact, since it is written, “To marry is better than to burn,” what, pray, is the nature of this “good,” which is only commended by comparison with an evil, so that the reason marrying is more good is merely that burning is less? No — how far better is it neither to marry nor to burn! Why, even in persecutions it is better to take advantage of the permission granted and “flee from town to town” than, once arrested and racked, to deny the faith. And so more blessed are those who have the strength to depart this life in the blessed confession of their witness. I might put it this way: what is permitted is not good. For how does the case stand? I must of necessity die, if I am arrested and confess my faith. If I think that fate a thing to be lamented, then flight is good. But if I am afraid of the thing that is permitted, then the reason it was permitted has some suspicion hanging over it. But what is “better,” no one ever merely “permitted” — being beyond question, and plain by its own inherent purity.

There are some things that are not to be wanted merely because they are not forbidden — although in a certain sense they are forbidden when other things are preferred to them, since preference given to the higher things is a dissuasion from the lowest. A thing is not “good” merely because it is not “evil,” nor is it “evil” merely because it does no harm. Further: what is fully “good” excels on this ground, that it is not only not harmful but useful into the bargain. For you are bound to prefer what is useful to what is merely not harmful. First place is what every struggle is fought for; second place has consolation attached to it, but not victory. But if we listen to the apostle, let us forget what is behind and strain after what is ahead, and be followers after the better rewards. So although he does not “cast a noose over us,” he does point out what tends to usefulness when he says, “The unmarried woman thinks about the things of the Lord, so that she may be holy in body and in spirit; but the married woman is anxious about how to please her husband.” And he nowhere permits marriage in such a way as not rather to wish us to do our utmost in imitation of his own example. Happy the man who turns out like Paul!

But we read that “the flesh is weak,” and on the strength of that we flatter ourselves in certain cases. Yet we read as well that “the spirit is strong,” for both clauses occur in one and the same sentence. Flesh is earthly material; spirit is heavenly material. Why, then, do we, so prone to excuse ourselves, put forward the weak part of us and take no notice of the strong? Why should the earthly not give way to the heavenly? If the spirit is stronger than the flesh, because it is of nobler origin besides, then it is our own fault if we follow the weaker one. Now there are two forms of human weakness that make marriages necessary for those who have been cut off from marriage. The first and most powerful is the one that arises from craving of the flesh; the second, from craving of the world. But by us, who are servants of God, who renounce both pleasure and ambition, each of them is to be refused. [n]

Craving of the flesh claims the rights of a grown-up age, hungers after beauty’s harvest, delights in its own shame, and pleads that the female sex needs a husband — as a source of authority and of comfort, or to keep her safe from bad rumors. Against these arguments of its own, set the examples of sisters of ours whose names are with the Lord: women who, when their husbands have gone on ahead of them, give no opportunity of beauty or of age precedence over holiness. They prefer to be wedded to God. To God their beauty is given, to God their youth. With him they live; with him they talk; him they “handle” by day and by night. Their prayers are the dowry they assign to the Lord, and from him, as often as they desire it, they receive his regard as their wedding gift. In this way they have laid hold for themselves of an everlasting gift of the Lord; and while still on earth, by holding off from marriage, they are already counted as belonging to the family of angels. Train yourself to match their steadiness by the examples of women like these, and you will bury that craving of the flesh under a love that is spiritual, doing away with the temporary and fleeting desires for beauty and youth by the compensating gain of blessings that never die.

Craving of the world, on the other hand, has for its causes glory, greed, ambition, not having enough; and by these causes it trumps up the “necessity” of marrying — promising itself heavenly things in exchange, if you please: to lord it in somebody else’s household, to brood over somebody else’s wealth, to squeeze splendor out of somebody else’s store, to run up expenses you never feel! Let all that be far from believers, who have no anxiety about their keep — unless it is that we distrust the promises of God, and his care and providence: he who clothes the lilies of the field with such grace, who feeds the birds of the sky without any labor on their part, who forbids anxiety about tomorrow’s food and clothing, promising that he knows what each of his servants needs. Not heavy necklaces, of course, not burdensome dresses, not Gallic mules or German bearers — all of which add luster to the glory of a wedding — but “enough,” which is what suits moderation and modesty. Take it, I beg you, that you need nothing if you “wait upon the Lord”; take it rather that you have everything, if you have the Lord, to whom everything belongs. Think often about things heavenly and you will look down on things earthly. For a widowhood signed and sealed before the Lord, nothing is needed but perseverance.

The further reasons for marriage that men allege for themselves arise from anxiety about descendants and the bitter, bitter pleasure of children. To us this is pointless. Why should we be eager to bear children whom, once we have them, we want to send on ahead of us — in view, I mean, of the hardships now hanging over us — when we are eager ourselves to be taken out of this most wicked world and received into the Lord’s presence, which is what even an apostle desired? Offspring, it seems, is a necessity for the servant of God! We are secure enough about our own salvation, of course, to have time to spare for children! Burdens have to be hunted up for us — burdens that even most of the pagans avoid, who are compelled to have children by law and who are worn down by the killing of their own children; burdens that, in the end, suit us least of all, since they put faith itself in danger. For why did the Lord foretell a “woe to those who are pregnant and those who are nursing,” except to testify that on that day of unloading the loads that children are will be an inconvenience? Those loads belong to marriage, of course; but that “woe” will not touch widows. At the angel’s first trumpet they will spring out unloaded — they will bear freely, to the end, whatever pressure and persecution comes, with no burdensome fruit of marriage heaving in the womb or at the breast. [s]

So whether it is for the sake of the flesh, or of the world, or of descendants that marriage is undertaken, none of these “necessities” touches the servants of God enough to keep me from thinking it sufficient to have yielded once for all to some one of them, and by one marriage to have paid off every craving of this kind. Let us marry daily, and in the middle of our marrying let that day of terror overtake us, as it overtook Sodom and Gomorrah! For there, of course, it was not only that they were dealing in marriage and merchandise: when he says, “They were marrying and buying,” he is branding the very leading vices of the flesh and of the world, the ones that call people away from divine training most of all — the one by the pleasure of feasting, the other by the greed of getting. And yet that “blindness” was felt long before “the ends of the world.” What, then, will the case be if God now keeps us from the vices that were detestable to him even back then? “The time,” says the apostle, “is compressed. What remains is that those who have wives should act as if they had none.”

But if those who have wives are bound to consign what they have to oblivion, how much more are those who do not have them prohibited from seeking a second time what they no longer have — so that a woman whose husband has departed this world should from then on impose rest on her sex by abstaining from marriage, the very abstinence that any number of pagan women devote to the memory of husbands they loved. When something looks difficult, let us survey other people who cope with harder things still. How many are there who from the moment of their baptism set a seal on their flesh? How many, again, who by equal consent on both sides cancel the debt of marriage — eunuchs by their own choice, for the sake of their desire for the kingdom of heaven! But if abstinence can be endured while the marriage tie is still intact, how much more when it has been undone. For I believe it is harder for what is intact to be given up altogether than for what has been lost not to be hankered after. [x]

A hard and uphill thing, surely, is the abstinence of a holy woman for God’s sake after her husband’s death — when pagan women, in honor of their own Satan, put up with priesthoods that involve virginity and widowhood alike! At Rome, for instance, the women whose business is with the likeness of that “fire that is never put out,” keeping watch over the omens of their own future penalty in company with the old dragon himself, are appointed on the ground of virginity. For the Achaean Juno, at the town of Aegium, a virgin is allotted; and the women who rave at Delphi know nothing of marriage. And we know, too, that widows serve the African Ceres, drawn away from marriage by the sternest forgetfulness of it. They do not only withdraw from husbands who are still alive; they even bring in other wives for them in their own place — the husbands smiling on it, of course — while every contact with males is forbidden them, right down to the kiss of their own sons. And yet, with unbroken practice, they persevere in a discipline of widowhood that shuts out even the comfort of family affection. These are the rules the devil has given his servants, and he is obeyed! He challenges God’s servants, if you please, by the abstinence of his own, as though on equal terms! Even the priests of Gehenna abstain! For he has found a way to ruin people even in good pursuits, and with him it makes no difference whether he kills some by pleasure and others by abstinence.

To us abstinence has been pointed out by the Lord of salvation as an instrument for gaining eternity, and as a testimony of our faith, and as a recommendation of this flesh of ours, which is to be kept for the “garment of immortality” that is one day to come over it — and, in the end, as a way of holding up under the will of God. Besides, reflect, I advise you, that nobody is taken out of the world except by the will of God, if, as is the case, not even a leaf falls from a tree without it. The same one who brings us into the world must of necessity take us out of it too. So when, by the will of God, the husband has died, the marriage has died as well, by the will of God. Why should you restore what God has put an end to? Why do you spurn the freedom offered to you by repeating the servitude of marriage? “You have been bound to a wife,” says the apostle; “do not seek to be loosed. You have been loosed from a wife; do not seek to be bound.” For even if you do not “sin” by marrying again, still, he says, “pressure of the flesh follows.” So, as far as we can, let us love the opportunity of abstinence; as soon as it offers itself, let us make up our minds to take it, so that what we have not had the strength to follow within marriage we may follow in widowhood. We must seize the occasion that puts an end to what necessity commanded. [ad]

How damaging to faith second marriages are, and how obstructive to holiness, the discipline of the church and the apostle’s rule declare, when he does not allow twice-married men to preside, and when he would not grant a widow admission into the order unless she had been “the wife of one husband.” For God’s altar has to be set out pure. That whole white crown that encircles the church is presented as consisting of holiness. Among the pagans, priesthood is a matter of widowhood and of celibacies — in keeping, of course, with the devil’s principle of rivalry. For it is against divine law for the king of this world, the chief priest, to marry a second time. How pleasing holiness must be to God, when even his enemy affects it! — not, of course, as having any kinship with anything good, but as an insult aimed at what is pleasing to God the Lord.