Chapter 17 [XV.]--What is Sinless in the Use of Matrimony? What is Attended With Venial Sin, and What with Mortal?
It is, however, one thing for married persons to have intercourse only for the wish to beget children, which is not sinful: it is another thing for them to desire carnal pleasure in cohabitation, but with the spouse only, which involves venial sin. For although propagation of offspring is not the motive of the intercourse, there is still no attempt to prevent such propagation, either by wrong desire or evil appliance. They who resort to these, although called by the name of spouses, are really not such; they retain no vestige of true matrimony, but pretend the honourable designation as a cloak for criminal conduct. Having also proceeded so far, they are betrayed into exposing their children, which are born against their will. They hate to nourish and retain those whom they were afraid they would beget. This infliction of cruelty on their offspring so reluctantly begotten, unmasks the sin which they had practised in darkness, and drags it clearly into the light of day. The open cruelty reproves the concealed sin. Sometimes, indeed, this lustful cruelty, or, if you please, cruel lust, resorts to such extravagant methods as to use poisonous drugs to secure barrenness; or else, if unsuccessful in this, to destroy the conceived seed by some means previous to birth, preferring that its offspring should rather perish than receive vitality; or if it was advancing to life within the womb, should be slain before it was born. Well, if both parties alike are so flagitious, they are not husband and wife; and if such were their character from the beginning, they have not come together by wedlock but by debauchery. But if the two are not alike in such sin, I boldly declare either that the woman is, so to say, the husband's harlot; or the man the wife's adulterer.
Chapter 18 [XVI.]--Continence Better Than Marriage; But Marriage Better Than Fornication.
Forasmuch, then, as marriage cannot be such as that of the primitive men might have been, if sin had not preceded; it may yet be like that of the holy fathers of the olden time, in such wise that the carnal concupiscence which causes shame (which did not exist in paradise previous to the fall, and after that event was not allowed to remain there), although necessarily forming a part of the body of this death, is not subservient to it, but only submits its function, when forced thereto, for the sole purpose of assisting in the procreation of children; otherwise, since the present time (as we have already [2122] said) is the period for abstaining from the nuptial embrace, and therefore makes no necessary demand on the exercise of the said function, seeing that all nations now contribute so abundantly to the production of an offspring which shall receive spiritual birth, there is the greater room for the blessing of an excellent continence. "He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." [2123] He, however, who cannot receive it, "even if he marry, sinneth not;" [2124] and if a woman have not the gift of continence, let her also marry. [2125] "It is good, indeed, for a man not to touch a woman." [2126] But since "all men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given," [2127] it remains that "to avoid fornication, every man ought to have his own wife, and every woman her own husband." [2128] And thus the weakness of incontinence is hindered from falling into the ruin of profligacy by the honourable estate of matrimony. Now that which the apostle says of women, "I will therefore that the younger women marry," [2129] is also applicable to males: I will that the younger men take wives; that so it may appertain to both sexes alike "to bear children, to be" fathers and "mothers of families, to give none occasion to the adversary to speak reproachfully." [2130]
[2122] See above, ch. 14 [xiii.].
[2123] Matt. xix. 12.
[2124] 1 Cor. vii. 28.
[2125] 1 Cor. vii. 9.
[2126] 1 Cor. vii. 1.
[2127] Matt. xix. 9.
[2128] 1 Cor. vii. 2.
[2129] 1 Tim. v. 14.
[2130] 1 Tim. v. 14.