Chapter V.--Of the Love of Offspring as a Plea for Marriage.
Further reasons for marriage which men allege for themselves arise from anxiety for posterity, and the bitter, bitter pleasure of children. To us this is idle. For why should we be eager to bear children, whom, when we have them, we desire to send before us (to glory) [388] (in respect, I mean, of the distresses that are now imminent); desirous as we are ourselves, too, to be taken out of this most wicked world, [389] and received into the Lord's presence, which was the desire even of an apostle? [390] To the servant of God, forsooth, offspring is necessary! For of our own salvation we are secure enough, so that we have leisure for children! Burdens must be sought by us for ourselves which are avoided even by the majority of the Gentiles, who are compelled by laws, [391] who are decimated [392] by abortions; [393] burdens which, finally, are to us most of all unsuitable, as being perilous to faith! For why did the Lord foretell a "woe to them that are with child, and them that give suck," [394] except because He testifies that in that day of disencumbrance the encumbrances of children will be an inconvenience? It is to marriage, of course, that those encumbrances appertain; but that ("woe") will not pertain to widows. (They) at the first trump of the angel will spring forth disencumbered--will freely bear to the end whatsoever pressure and persecution, with no burdensome fruit of marriage heaving in the womb, none in the bosom.
Therefore, whether it be for the sake of the flesh, or of the world, [395] or of posterity, that marriage is undertaken, nothing of all these "necessities" affects the servants of God, so as to prevent my deeming it enough to have once for all yielded to some one of them, and by one marriage appeased [396] all concupiscence of this kind. Let us marry daily, and in the midst of our marrying let us be overtaken, like Sodom and Gomorrah, by that day of fear! [397] For there it was not only, of course, that they were dealing in marriage and merchandise; but when He says, "They were marrying and buying," He sets a brand [398] upon the very leading vices of the flesh and of the world, [399] which call men off the most from divine disciplines--the one through the pleasure of rioting, the other though the greed of acquiring. And yet that "blindness" then was felt long before "the ends of the world." [400] What, then, will the case be if God now keep us from the vices which of old were detestable before Him? "The time," says (the apostle), "is compressed. [401] It remaineth that they who have wives [402] act as if they had them not."
[388] Comp. c. iv. above "præmissis maritis;" "when their husbands have preceded them (to glory)."
[389] Sæculo.
[390] Phil. i. 23; comp. de Pa., c. ix. ad fin.
[391] i.e., to get children.
[392] Expugnantur.
[393] "Parricidiis." So Oehler seems to understand it.
[394] Luke xxi. 23; Matt. xxiv. 19.
[395] Sæculi.
[396] "Expiasse"--a rare but Ciceronian use of the word.
[397] Luke xvii. 28, 29.
[398] Denotat.
[399] Sæculi.
[400] Sæculi. Comp. 1 Cor. x. 11; but the Greek there is, ta tele ton aionon. By the "blindness," Tertullian may refer to Gen. xix. 11.
[401] Or, "short" (Eng. ver.); 1 Cor. vii. 29. ho kairos sunestalmenos, "in collecto."
[402] "Matrimonia," neut. pl. again for the fem., the abstract for the concrete. See c. ii., "to multiply wives," and the note there. In the Greek (1 Cor. vii. 29) it is gunaikas: but the ensuing chapter shows that Tertullian refers the passage to women as well.
Chapter VI.--Examples of Heathens Urged as Commendatory of Widowhood and Celibacy.
But if they who have (wives) are (thus) bound to consign to oblivion what they have, how much more are they who have not, prohibited from seeking a second time what they no longer have; so that she whose husband has departed from the world should thenceforward impose rest on her sex by abstinence from marriage--abstinence which numbers of Gentile women devote to the memory of beloved husbands! When anything seems difficult, let us survey others who cope with still greater difficulties. How many are there who from the moment of their baptism set the seal (of virginity) upon their flesh? How many, again, who by equal mutual consent cancel the debt of matrimony--voluntary eunuchs [403] for the sake of their desire after the celestial kingdom! But if, while the marriage-tie is still intact, abstinence is endured, how much more when it has been undone! For I believe it to be harder for what is intact to be quite forsaken, than for what has been lost not to be yearned after. A hard and arduous thing enough, surely, is the continence for God's sake of a holy woman after her husband's decease, when Gentiles, [404] in honour of their own Satan, endure sacerdotal offices which involve both virginity and widowhood! [405] At Rome, for instance, they who have to do with the type of that "inextinguishable fire," [406] keeping watch over the omens of their own (future) penalty, in company with the (old) dragon [407] himself, are appointed on the ground of virginity. To the Achæan Juno, at the town Ægium, a virgin is allotted; and the (priestesses) who rave at Delphi know not marriage. Moreover, we know that widows minister to the African Ceres; enticed away, indeed, from matrimony by a most stem oblivion: for not only do they withdraw from their still living husbands, but they even introduce other wives to them in their own room--the husbands, of course, smiling on it--all contact (with males), even as far as the kiss of their sons, being forbidden them; and yet, with enduring practice, they persevere in such a discipline of widowhood, which excludes the solace even of holy affection. [408] These precepts has the devil given to his servants, and he is heard! He challenges, forsooth, God's servants, by the continence of his own, as if on equal terms! Continent are even the priests of hell! [409] For he has found a way to ruin men even in good pursuits; and with him it makes no difference to slay some by voluptuousness, some by continence.
[403] Comp. de Pa., xiii., and Matt. xix. 12. Comp. too, de Ex. Cast., c. i.
[404] i.e., Gentile women.
[405] Oehler marks this as a question.
[406] Matt. iii. 12.
[407] Comp. Rev. xii. 9, and de Bapt., 1.
[408] Pietatis.
[409] Gehennæ; comp. de Pæn., c. xii. ad init.