On Exhortation to Chastity

​But concerning second marriage, we plainly know that the apostle pronounced: ‘Are you loosed from a wife? Do not seek a wife; but if you marry, you will not sin.’ Yet in like manner, he introduced the sequence of this discourse also from his own counsel, not from a divine precept. But there is a great difference between a precept of God and a counsel of a man. ‘A precept of the Lord,’ he says, ‘I do not have, but I give counsel, as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord to be faithful.’ Moreover, neither in the gospel nor in the epistles of Paul himself would you find the repetition of marriage permitted by a precept of God. Whence it is confirmed that one marriage must be held, because what is not found permitted by the Lord is recognized as forbidden. Add that this very interposition of human counsel, as if having already suffered a reconsideration of its own excess, immediately restrains and recalls itself, when he adds, ‘Nevertheless such shall have trouble in the flesh,’ when he says that he spares them, when he adds that the time is shortened, in which it is necessary that even those who have marriages act as though they had them not, when he contrasts the anxiety of the married and the unmarried. For by these things teaching why it is not expedient to marry, he dissuades from that which he had permitted above. And this concerning first marriage, how much more concerning second? But when he exhorts us to his own example, indeed showing what he wants us to be, that is, continent, he equally declares what he does not want us to be, that is, incontinent. Thus he himself also, when he wants another thing, does not permit what he does not want, either willingly or in truth. For if he wanted it, he would not have permitted it, but rather commanded it. But behold, again he says that a woman, her husband being dead, can marry, to whom she wants, only ‘in the Lord.’ ‘But,’ he says, ‘she will be happier if she remains so, according to my counsel. And I think that I also have the spirit of God.’ We see two counsels: one by which he grants permission of marrying above, and another by which he afterwards teaches continence of marrying. To which, therefore, you say, shall we assent? Look closely and read. When he grants permission, he alleges the counsel of a prudent man; when he enjoins continence, he affirms the counsel of the Holy Spirit. Follow the admonition which divinity patronizes. Believers indeed also have the spirit of God, but not all believers are apostles. Therefore, when he who had called himself faithful added afterwards that he has the spirit of God (which no one would doubt even concerning a believer), he said it for this reason, to restore to himself the pinnacle of an apostle. For properly the apostles have the Holy Spirit, who have Him fully in the works of prophecy, the efficacy of virtues, and the proofs of tongues, not in part, which others do. Thus he made the authority of the Holy Spirit approach that class which he preferred us to obey, and it became now not a counsel of the divine spirit, but, in accordance with His majesty, a precept.

​To direct the law of marrying once, the very origin of the human race patronizes, testifying what God established in the beginning as a pattern to be rehearsed for posterity. For when He had fashioned man and had provided a necessary helpmate for him, borrowing one of his ribs He fashioned one woman for him, whereas indeed neither the craftsman nor the material had been lacking. There were many ribs in Adam and untiring hands in God, but not many wives with God. And therefore Adam, the man of God, and Eve, the woman of God, having performed a single marriage between themselves, sanctioned a pattern for men from the authority of origin and the first will of God. Therefore, ‘They shall be,’ he says, ‘two in one flesh,’ not three, nor four. Otherwise, there is no longer one flesh, nor two in one flesh. Then they shall be, if the union and coalescing are made once in unity. But if again or more often, it already ceases to be one, and they will be not two in one flesh, but plainly one rib in many. But when the apostle interprets ‘They shall be two in one flesh’ in reference to the church and Christ, according to the spiritual marriage of the church and Christ (for there is one Christ and His one church), we ought to recognize that the law of one marriage is doubled and reinforced for us, as much according to the foundation of the race as according to the sacrament of Christ. We are reckoned in both from one marriage, both carnally in Adam and spiritually in Christ. Of the two births, there is one prescription of monogamy. In both, he degenerates who goes out of the path of monogamy. The number of marriage began from a cursed man. Lamech, first married to two, made three into one flesh.