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TOPIC: Post-Nicene Fathers Vol 06 (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 26.01.13 Letters XLVIII Part 1
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Letter XLVIII. To Pammachius.
An "apology" for the two books "against Jovinian" which Jerome had written a short time previously, and of which he had sent copies to Rome. These Pammachius and his other friends had withheld from publication, thinking that Jerome had unduly exalted virginity at the expense of marriage. He now writes to make good his position, and to do this makes copious extracts from the obnoxious treatise. The date of the letter is 393 or 394 a.d.
1. Your own silence is my reason for not having written hitherto. For I feared that, if I were to write to you without first hearing from you, you would consider me not so much a conscientious as a troublesome correspondent. But, now that I have been challenged by your most delightful letter, a letter which calls upon me to defend my views by an appeal to first principles, I receive my old fellow-learner, companion, and friend with open arms, as the saying goes; and I look forward to having in you a champion of my poor writings; if, that is to say, I can first conciliate your judgment to give sentence in my favor, and can instruct my advocate in all those points on which I am assailed. For both your favorite, Cicero, and before him-in his one short treatise-Antonius,hyperlink write to this effect, that the chief requisite for victory is to acquaint one's self carefully with the case which one has to plead.
2. Certain persons find fault with me because in the books which I have written against Jovinian I have been excessive (so they say) in praise of virginity and in depreciation of marriage; and they affirm that to preach up chastity till no comparison is left between a wife and a virgin is equivalent to a condemnation of matrimony. If I remember aright the point of the dispute, the question at issue between myself and Jovinian is that he puts marriage on a level with virginity, while I make it inferior; he declares that there is little or no difference between the two states, I assert that there is a great deal. Finally-a result due under God to your agency-he has been condemned because he has dared to set matrimony on an equality with perpetual chastity. Or, if a virgin and a wife are to be looked on as the same, how comes it that Rome has refused to listen to this impious doctrine? A virgin owes her being to a man, but a man does not owe his to a virgin. There can be no middle course. Either my view of the matter must be embraced, or else that of Jovinian. If I am blamed for putting wedlock below virginity, he must be praised for putting the two states on a level. If, on the other hand, he is condemned for supposing them equal, his condemnation must be taken as testimony in favor of my treatise. If men of the world chafe under the notion that they occupy a position inferior to that of virgins, I wonder that clergymen and monks-who both live celibate lives-refrain from praising what they consistently practise. They cut themselves off from their wives to imitate the chastity of virgins, and yet they will have it that married women are as good as these. They should either be joined again to their wives whom they have renounced, or, if they persist in living apart from them, they will have to confess-by their lives if not by their words-that, in preferring virginity to marriage, they have chosen the better course, Am I then a mere novice in the Scriptures, reading the sacred volumes for the first time? And is the line there drawn between virginity and marriage so fine that I have been unable to observe it? I could know nothing, forsooth, of the saying, "Be not righteous overmuch!"hyperlink Thus, while I try to protect myself on one side, I am wounded on the other; to speak more plainly still, while I close with Jovinian in hand-to-hand combat, Manichaeus stabs me in the back. Have I not, I would ask, in the very forefront of my work set the following preface:hyperlink "We are no disciples of Marcionhyperlink or of Manichaeus,hyperlink to detract from marriage. Nor are we deceived by the error of Tatian,hyperlink the chief of the Encratites,hyperlink into supposing all cohabitation unclean. For he condemns and reprobates not marriage only, but foods also which God has created for us to enjoy.hyperlink We know that in a large house there are vessels not only of silver and of gold, but of wood also and of earth.hyperlink We know, too, that on the foundation of Christ which Paul the master builder has laid, some build up gold, silver, and precious stones; others, on the contrary, hay, wood, and stubble.hyperlink We are not ignorant that `marriage is honorable ...and the bed undefiled.'hyperlink We have read the first decree of God: `Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.'hyperlink But while we allow marriage, we prefer the virginity which springs from it. Gold is more precious than silver, but is silver on that account the less silver? Is it an insult to a tree to prefer its apples to its roots or its leaves? Is it an injury to corn to put the ear before the stalk and the blade? As apples come from the tree and grain from the straw, so virginity comes from wedlock. Yields of one hundredfold, of sixtyfold, and of thirtyfoldhyperlink may all come from one soil and from one sowing, yet they will differ widely in quantity. The yield thirtyfold signifies wedlock, for the joining together of the fingers to express that number, suggestive as it is of a loving gentle kiss or embracing, aptly represents the relation of husband and wife. The yield sixtyfold refers to widows who are placed in a position of distress and tribulation. Accordingly, they are typified by that finger which is placed under the other to express the number sixty; for, as it is extremely trying when one has once tasted pleasure to abstain from its enticements, so the reward of doing this is proportionately great. Moreover, a hundred-I ask the reader to give me his best attention-necessitates a change from the left hand to the right; but while the hand is different the fingers are the same as those which on the left hand signify married women and widows; only in this instance the circle formed by them indicates the crown of virginity."hyperlink
3. Does a man who speaks thus, I would ask you, condemn marriage? If I have called virginity gold, I have spoken of marriage as silver. I have set forth that the yields an hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold-all spring from one soil and from one sowing, although in amount they differ widely. Will any of my readers be so unfair as to judge me, not by my words, but by his own opinion? At any rate, I have dealt much more gently with marriage than most Latin and Greek writers;hyperlink who, by referring the hundredfold yield to martyrs, the sixtyfold to virgins, and the thirtyfold to widows, show that in their opinion married persons are excluded from the good ground and from the seed of the great Father.hyperlink But, lest it might be supposed that, though cautious at the outset, I was imprudent in the remainder of my work, have I not, after marking out the divisions of it, on coming to the actual questions immediately introduced the following:hyperlink "I ask all of you of both sexes, at once those who are virgins and continent and those who are married or twice married, to aid my efforts with your prayers." Jovinian is the foe of all indiscriminately, but can I condemn as Manichaean heretics persons whose prayers I need and whose assistance I entreat to help me in my work?
4. As the brief compass of a letter does not suffer us to delay too long on a single point, let us now pass to those which remain. In explaining the testimony of the apostle, "The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise, also, the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife,"hyperlink we have subjoined the following:hyperlink "The entire question relates to those who are living in wedlock, whether it is lawful for them to put away their wives, a thing which the Lord also has forbidden in the Gospel.hyperlink Hence, also, the apostle says: `It is good for a man not to touch' a wife or `a woman,'hyperlink as if there were danger in the contact which he who should so touch one could not escape. Accordingly, when the Egyptian woman desired to touch Joseph he flung away his cloak and fled from her hands.hyperlink But as he who has once married a wife cannot, except by consent, abstain from intercourse with her or repudiate her, so long as she does not sin, he must render unto his wife her due,hyperlink because he has of his own free will bound himself to render it under compulsion." Can one who declares that it is a precept of the Lord that wives should not be put away, and that what God has joined together man must not, without consent, put asunderhyperlink -can such an one be said to condemn marriage? Again, in the verses which follow, the apostle says: "But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that."hyperlink In explanation of this saying we made the following remarks:hyperlink "What I myself would wish, he says, is clear. But since there are diversities of gifts in the church,hyperlink I allow marriage as well, that I may not appear to condemn nature. Reflect, too, that the gift of virginity is one thing, that of marriage another. For had there been one reward for married women and for virgins he would never, after giving the counsel of continence, have gone on to say: `But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner and another after that.' Where each class has its proper gift, there must be some distinction between the classes. I allow that marriage, as well as virginity, is the gift of God, but there is a great difference between gift and gift. Finally, the apostle himself says of one who had lived in incest and afterwards repented: `Contrariwise ye ought rather to forgive him and comfort him,'hyperlink and `To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also.'hyperlink And, lest we might suppose a man's gift to be but a small thing, he has added: `For if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the sighthyperlink of Christ.'hyperlink The gifts of Christ are different. Hence Joseph as a type of Him had a coat of many colors.hyperlink So in the forty-fourth psalmhyperlink we read of the Church: `Upon thy right hand did stand the queen in a vesture of gold, wrought about with divers colors.'hyperlink The apostle Peter, too, speaks (of husbands and wives) `as being heirs together of the manifold grace of God.'hyperlink In Greek the expression is still more striking, the word used being poiai/lh, that is, `many-colored.'"
5. I ask, then, what is the meaning of men's obstinate determination to shut their eyes and to refuse to look on what is as clear as day? I have said that there are diversities of gifts in the Church, and that virginity is one gift and wedlock another. And shortly after I have used the words: "I allow marriage also to be a gift of God, but there is a great difference between gift and gift." Can it be said that I condemn that which in the clearest terms I declare to be the gift of God? Moreover, if Joseph is taken as a type of the Lord, his coat of many colors is a type of virgins and widows, celibates and wedded. Can any one who has any part in Christ's tunic be regarded as an alien? Have we not spoken of the very queen herself-that is, the Church of the Saviour-as wearing a vesture of gold wrought about with divers colors? Moreover, when I came to discuss marriage in connection with the following verses,hyperlink I still adhered to the same view.hyperlink "This passage," I said, "has indeed no relation to the present controversy; for, following the decision of the Lord, the apostle teaches that a wife must not be put away saving for fornication, and that, if she has been put away, she cannot during the lifetime of her husband marry another man, or, at any rate, that she ought, if possible, to be reconciled to her husband. In another verse he speaks to the same effect: `The wife is bound ...as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is loosed from the law of her husband;hyperlink she is at liberty to be married to, whom she will; only in the Lord,'hyperlink that is to a Christian. Thus the apostle, while he allows a second or a third marriage in the Lord, forbids even a first with a heathen."
6. I ask my detractors to open their ears and to realize the fact that I have allowed second and third marriages "in the Lord." If, then, I have not condemned second and third marriages, how can I have proscribed a first? Moreover, in the passage where I interpret the words of the apostle, "Is any man called being circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Is any called in uncircumcision? let him not be circumcised"hyperlink (a passage, it is true, which some most careful interpreters of Scripture refer to the circumcision and slavery of the Law), do I not in the clearest terms stand up for the marriage-tie? My words are these:hyperlink "`If any man is called in uncircumcision, let him not be circumcised.' You had a wife, the apostle says, when you believed. Do not fancy your faith in Christ to be a reason for parting from her. For `God hath called us in peace.'hyperlink `Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the keeping of the commandments of God.'hyperlink Neither celibacy nor wedlock is of the slightest use without works, since even faith, the distinguishing mark of Christians, if it have not works, is said to be dead,hyperlink and on such terms as these the virgins of Vesta or of Juno, who was constant to onehyperlink husband, might claim to be numbered among the saints. And a little further on he says: `Art thou called being a servant, care not for it; but, if thou mayest be made free, use it rather;'hyperlink that is to say, if you have a wife, and are bound to her, and render her her due, and have not power of your own body-or, to speak yet more plainly-if you are the slave of a wife, do not allow this to cause you sorrow, do not sigh over the loss of your virginity. Even if you can find pretexts for parting from her to enjoy the freedom of chastity, do not seek your own welfare at the price of another's ruin. Keep your wife for a little, and do not try too hastily to overcome her reluctance. Wait till she follows your example. If you only have patience, your wife will some day become your sister."
7. In another passage we have discussed the reasons which led Paul to say: "Now concerning virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful."hyperlink Here also, while we have ex-tolled virginity, we have been careful to give marriage its due.hyperlink "Had the Lord commanded virginity," we said, "He would have seemed to condemn marriage and to do away with that seed-plot of humanity from which virginity itself springs. Had He cut away the root how could He have looked for fruit? Unless He had first laid the foundations, how could He have built the edifice or crowned it with a roof made to cover its whole extent?" If we have spoken of marriage as the root whose fruit is virginity, and if we have made wedlock the foundation on which the building or the roof of perpetual chastity is raised, which of my detractors can be so captious or so blind as to ignore the foundation on which the fabric and its roof are built, while he has before his eyes both the fabric and the roof themselves? Once more, in another place, we have brought forward the testimony of the apostle to this effect: "Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife."hyperlink To this we have appended the following remarks:hyperlink "Each of us has his own sphere allotted to him. Let me have mine, and do you keep yours. If you are bound to a wife, do not put her away. If I am loosed from a wife, let me not seek a wife. Just as I do not loose marriage-ties when they are once made, so do you refrain from binding together what at present is loosed from such ties." Yet another passage bears unmistakable testimony to the view which we have taken of virginity and of wedlock:hyperlink "The apostle casts no snare upon us,hyperlink nor does he compel us to be what we do not wish. He only urges us to what is honorable and seemly, inciting us earnestly to serve the Lord, to be anxious always to please Him, and to took for His will which He has prepared for us to do. We are to be like alert and armed soldiers, who immediately execute the orders given to them and perform them without that travail of mindhyperlink which, according to the preacher, is given to the men of this world `to be exercised therewith.'"hyperlink At the end, also, of our comparison of virgins and married women we have summed up the discussion thus:hyperlink "When one thing is good and another thing is better; when that which is good has a different reward from that which is better; and when there are more rewards than one, then, obviously, there exists a diversity of gifts. The difference between marriage and virginity is as great as that between not doing evil and doing good-or, to speak more favorably still, as that between what is good and what is still better."
8. In the sequel we go on to Speak thus:hyperlink "The apostle, in concluding his discussion of marriage and of virginity, is careful to observe a mean course in discriminating between them, and, turning neither to the right hand nor to the left, he keeps to the King's highway,hyperlink and thus fulfils the injunction, `Be not righteous overmuch.'hyperlink Moreover, when he goes on to compare monogamy with digamy, he puts digamy after monogamy, just as before he subordinated marriage to virginity." Do we not clearly show by this language what is typified in the Holy Scriptures by the terms right and left, and also what we take to be the meaning of the words "Be not righteous overmuch"? We turn to the left if, following the lust of Jews and Gentiles, we burn for sexual intercourse; we turn to the right if, following the error of the Manichaeans, we under a pretence of chastity entangle ourselves in the meshes of unchastity. But we keep to the King's highway if we aspire to virginity yet refrain from condemning marriage. Can any one, moreover, be so unfair in his criticism of my poor treatise as to allege that I condemn first marriages, when he reads my opinion on second ones as follows:hyperlink "The apostle, it is true, allows second marriages, but only to such women as are bent upon them, to such as cannot contain,hyperlink lest `when they have begun to wax wanton against Christ they marry, having condemnation because they have rejected their first faith,'hyperlink and he makes this concession because many `are turned aside after Satan.'hyperlink But they will be happier if they abide as widows. To this he immediately adds his apostolical authority, `after my judgment.' Moreover, lest any should consider that authority, being human, to be of small weight, he goes on to say, `and I think also that I have the spirit of God.'hyperlink Thus, where he urges men to continence he appeals not to human authority, but to the Spirit of God; but when he gives them permission to marry he does not mention the Spirit of God, but allows prudential considerations to turn the balance, relaxing the strictness of his code in favor of individuals according to their several needs." Having thus brought forward proofs that second marriages are allowed by the apostle, we at once added the remarks which follow:hyperlink "As marriage is permitted to virgins by reason of the danger of fornication, and as what in itself is not desirable is thus made excusable, so by reason of the same danger widows are permitted to marry a second time. For it is better that a woman should know one man (though he should be a second husband or a third) than that she should know several. In other words, it is preferable that she should prostitute herself to one rather than to many." Calumny may do its worst. We have spoken here not of a first marriage, but of a second, of a third, or (if you like) of a fourth. But lest any one should apply my words (that it is better for a woman to prostitute herself to one man than to several) to a first marriage when my whole argument dealt with digamy and trigamy, I marked my own view of these practices with the words:hyperlink "`All things are lawful, but all things are not expedient.'hyperlink I do not condemn digamists nor yet trigamists, nor even, to put an extreme, case, octogamists. I will make a still greater concession: I am ready to receive even a whore-monger, if penitent. In every case where fairness is possible, fair consideration must be shown."
9. My calumniator should blush at his assertion that I condemn first marriages when he reads my words just now quoted: "I do not condemn digamists or trigamists, or even, to put an extreme case, octogamists." Not to condemn is one thing, to commend is another. I may concede a practice as allowable and yet not praise it as meritorious. But if I seem severe in saying, "In every case where fairness is possible, fair consideration must be shown," no one, I fancy, will judge me either cruel or stern who reads that the places prepared for virgins and for wedded persons are different from those prepared for trigamists, octogamists, and penitents. That Christ Himself, although in the flesh a virgin, was in the spirit a monogamist, having one wife, even the Church,hyperlink I have shown in the latter part of my argument.hyperlink And yet I am supposed to condemn marriage! I am said to condemn it, although I use such words as these:hyperlink "It is an undoubted fact that the levitical priests were descended from the stock of Aaron, Eleazar, and Phinehas; and, as all these were married men, we might well be confronted with them if, led away by the error of the Encratites, we were to contend that marriage is in itself deserving of condemnation." Here I blame Tatian, the chief of the Encratites, for his rejection of marriage, and yet I myself am said to condemn it! Once more, when I contrast virgins with widows, my own words show what my view is concerning wedlock, and set forth the threefold gradation which I propose of virgins, widows-whether in practice or in facthyperlink -and wedded wives. "I do not deny"-these are my wordshyperlink -"the blessedness of widows who continue such after their baptism, nor do I undervalue the merit of wives who live in chastity with their husbands; but, just as widows receive a greater reward from God than wives obedient to their husbands, they, too, must be content to see virgins preferred before themselves."
10. Again, when explaining the witness of the apostle to the Galatians, "By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified," I have spoken to the following effect: "Marriages also are works of the law. And for this reason there is a curse upon such as do not produce offspring. They are permitted, it is true, even under the Gospel; but it is one thing to concede an indulgence to what is a weakness and quite another to promise a reward to what is a virtue." See my express declaration that marriage is allowed in the Gospel, yet that those who are married cannot receive the rewards of chastity so long as they render their due one to another. If married men feel indignant at this statement, let them vent their anger not on me but on the Holy Scriptures; nay, more, upon all bishops, presbyters, and deacons, and the whole company of priests and levites, who know that they cannot offer sacrifices if they fulfil the obligations of marriage. Again, when I adduce evidence from the Apocalypse,hyperlink is it not clear what view I take concerning virgins, widows, and wives? "These are they who sing a new songhyperlink which no man can sing except he be a virgin. These are `the first fruits unto God and unto the Lamb,'hyperlink and they are without spot. If virgins are the first fruits unto God, then widows and wives who live in continence must come after the first fruits-that is to say, in the second place and in the third." We place widows, then, and wives in the second place and in the third, and for this we are charged by the frenzy of a heretic with condemning marriage altogether.
11. Throughout the book I have made many remarks in a tone of great moderation on virginity, widowhood, and marriage. But for the sake of brevity, I will here adduce but one passage, and that of such a kind that no one, I think, will be found to gainsay it save some one who wishes to prove himself malicious or mad. In describing our Lord's visit to the marriage at Cana in Galilee,hyperlink after some other remarks I have added these:hyperlink "He who went but once to a marriage has taught us that a woman should marry but once; and this fact might tell against virginity if we failed to give marriage its due place-after virginity that is, and chaste widowhood. But, as it is only heretics who condemn marriage and tread under foot the ordinance of God, we listen with gladness to every word said by our Lord in praise of marriage. For the Church does not condemn marriage, but only subordinates it. It does not reject it altogether, but regulates it, knowing (as I have said above) that `in a great house there are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honor and some to dishonor. If a man, therefore, purge himself ...he shall be a vessel unto honor meet ...and prepared unto every good work.'"hyperlink I listen with gladness, I say here, to every word said by the apostle in praise of marriage. Do I listen with gladness to the praise of marriage, and do I yet condemn marriage? The Church, I say, does not condemn wedlock, but subordinates it. Whether you like it or not, marriage is subordinated to virginity and widowhood. Even when marriage continues to fulfil its function, the Church does not condemn it, but only subordinates it; it does not reject it, but only regulates it. It is in your power, if you will, to mount the second step of chastity.hyperlink Why are you angry if, standing on the third and lowest step, you will not make haste to go up higher?
12. Since, then, I have so often reminded my reader of my views; and since I have picked my way like a prudent traveller over every inch of the road, stating repeatedly that, while I receive marriage as a thing in itself admissible, I yet prefer continence, widowhood, and virginity, the wise and generous reader ought to have judged what seemed hard sayings by my general drift, and not to have charged me with putting forward inconsistent opinions in one and the same book. For who is so dull or so inexperienced in writing as to praise and to condemn one and the same object, as to destroy what he has built up, and to build up what he has destroyed; and when he has vanquished his opponent, to turn his sword, last of all against himself? Were my detractors country bred or unacquainted with the arts of rhetoric or of logic, I should pardon their want of insight; nor should I censure them for accusing me if I saw that their ignorance was in fault and not their will. As it is men of intellect who have enjoyed a liberal education make it their object less to understand me than to wound me, and for such I have this short answer, that they should correct my faults and not merely censure me for them. The lists are open, I cry; your enemy has marshalled his forces, his position is plain, and (if I may quote Virgilhyperlink )-
The foeman calls you: meet him face to face.
Such men should answer their opponent. They ought to keep within the limits of debate, and not to wield the schoolmaster's rod. Their books should aim at showing in what my statements have fallen short of the truth, and in what they have exceeded it. For, although I will not listen to fault-finders, I will follow the advice of teachers. To direct the fighter how to fight when you yourself occupy a post of vantage on the wall is a kind of teaching that does not commend itself; and when you are yourself bathed in perfumes, it is unworthy to charge a bleeding soldier with cowardice. Nor in saying this do I lay myself open to a charge of boasting that while others have slept I only have entered the lists. My meaning simply is that men who have seen me wounded in this warfare may possibly be a little too cautious in their methods of fighting. I would not have you engage in an encounter in which you will have nothing to do but to protect yourself, your right hand remaining motionless while your left manages your shield. You must either strike or fall. I cannot account you a victor unless I see your opponent put to the sword.
13. You are, no doubt, men of vast acquirements; but we too have studied in the schools, and, like you, we have learned from the precepts of Aristotle-or, rather, from those which he has derived from Gorgias-that there are different ways of speaking; and we know, among other things, that he who writes for display uses one style, and he who writes to convince, another.hyperlink In the former case the debate is desultory; to confute the opposer, now this argument is adduced and now that. One argues as one pleases, saying one thing while one means another. To quote the proverb, "With one hand one offers bread, in the other one holds a stone."hyperlink In the latter case a certain frankness and openness of countenance are necessary. For it is one thing to start a problem and another to expound what is already proved. The first calls for a disputant, the second for a teacher. I stand in the thick of the fray, my life in constant danger: you who profess to teach me are a man of books. "Do not," you say, "attack unexpectedly or wound by a side-thrust. Strike straight at your opponent. You should be ashamed to resort to feints instead of force." As if it were not the perfection of fighting to menace one part and to strike another. Read, I beg of you, Demosthenes or Cicero, or (if you do not care for pleaders whose aim is to speak plausibly rather than truly) read Plato, Theophrastus, Xenophon, Aristotle, and the rest of those who draw their respective rills of wisdom from the Socratic fountain-head. Do they show any openness? Are they devoid of artifice? Is not every word they say filled with meaning? And does not this meaning always make for victory? Origen, Methodius, Eusebius, and Apollinarishyperlink write at great length against Celsus and Porphyry.hyperlink Consider how subtle are the arguments, how insidious the engines with which they overthrow what the spirit of the devil has wrought. Sometimes, it is true, they are compelled to say not what they think but what is needful; and for this reason they employ against their opponents the assertions of the Gentiles themselves. I say nothing of the Latin authors, of Tertullian, Cyprian, Minutius, Victorinus, Lactantius, Hilary, lest I should appear not so much to be defending myself as to be assailing others. I will only mention the Apostle Paul, whose words seem to me, as often as I hear them, to be not words, but peals of thunder. Read his epistles, and especially those addressed to the Romans, to the Galatians, and to the Ephesians, in all of which he stands in the thick of the battle, and you will see how skilful and how careful he is in the proofs which he draws from the Old Testament, and how warily he cloaks the object which he has in view. His words seem simplicity itself: the expressions of a guileless and unsophisticated person-one who has no skill either to plan a dilemma or to avoid it. Still, whichever way you look, they are thunderbolts. His pleading halts, yet he carries every point which he takes up. He turns his back upon his foe only to overcome him; he simulates flight, but only that he may slay. He, then, if any one, ought to be calumniated; we should speak thus to him: "The proofs which yon have used against the Jews or against other heretics bear a different meaning in their own contexts to that which they bear in your epistles. We see passages taken captive by your pen and pressed into service to win you a victory which in the volumes from which they are taken have no controversial bearing at all." May he not reply to us in the words of the Saviour: "I have one mode of speech for those that are without and another for those that are within; the crowds hear my parables, but their interpretation is for my disciples alone"?hyperlink The Lord puts questions to the Pharisees, but does not elucidate them. To teach a disciple is one thing; to vanquish an opponent, another. "My mystery is for me," says the prophet; "my mystery is for me and for them that are mine."hyperlink
Footnotes
1037 Marcus Antonius, a Roman orator spoken of by Cicero. Orator c. 5, De Oratore i. c. 21, 47, 48. His treatise "De ratione dicendi" is lost. See Quintal iii. 1, 192.
1038 Eccl. vii. 16: see Ag. Jov. i. 14.
1039 Against Jov. i. 3.
1040 A Gnostic presbyter of the second century who rejected the Old Testament.
1041 An Eastern teacher of the third century, a.d., the main feature of whose system was its uncompromising dualism.
1042 A Syrian rhetorician converted to Christianity by Justin Martyr. He wrote a harmony of the Gospels called Diatessaron.
1043 I.e. "the abstainers," or "the continent," a Gnostic sect in the second century.
1044 1 Tim. iv. 3.
1045 2 Tim. ii. 20.
1046 1 Cor. iii. 10-12.
1047 Heb. xiii. 4.
1048 Gen. i. 28.
1049 Matt. xiii. 8.
1050 From this passage compared with Ep. cxxiii. 9, and Bede De Temporum Ratlone, c. 1. (De Loquetâ Digitorum), it appears that the number thirty was indicated by joining the tips of the thumb and forefinger of the left hand, sixty was indicated by curling up the forefinger of the same hand and then doubling the thumb over it, while one hundred was expressed by joining the tips of the thumb and forefinger of the right hand. See Prof. Mayor's learned note on Juv. x. 249.
1051 E.g. Cyprian and Origen (Hom. i. in Jos.).
1052 Paterfamilias. Vide Cypr. de Hab. Virg. 21.
1053 Ag. Jov. i. 4.
1054 1 Cor. vii. 4.
1055 Ag. Jov. i. 7.
1056 Matt. xix. 9.
1057 1 Cor. vii. 1.
1058 Gen. xxxix. 12, Gen. xxxix. 13.
1059 1 Cor. vii. 3, R.V.
1060 Matt. xix. 6.
1061 1 Cor. vii. 7.
1062 Ag. Jov. i. 8.
1063 1 Cor. xii. 4.
1064 2 Cor. ii. 7.
1065 2 Cor. ii. 10.
1066 A.V. marg.
1067 2 Cor. ii. 10.
1068 Gen. xxxvii. 23.
1069 Acc. to the Vulgate. In A.V. it is the 45th.
1070 Ps. xlv. 10, P.B.V.
1071 1 Pet. iii. 7; 1 Pet. iv. 10.
1072 1 Cor. vii. 8-10.
1073 Ag. Jov. i. 10.
1074 Rom. vii. 2.
1075 1 Cor. vii. 39.
1076 1 Cor. vii. 18.
1077 Ag. Jov. i. 11.
1078 1 Cor. vii. 15, R.V.
1079 1 Cor. vii. 19.
1080 Jas. ii. 17.
1081 Univira.
1082 1 Cor. vii. 21.
1083 1 Cor. vii. 25.
1084 Ag. Jov. i. 12.
1085 1 Cor. vii. 21.
1086 Ag. Jov. i. 12.
1087 Ag. Jov. i. 13.
1088 1 Cor. vii. 35.
1089 Jerome here explains the word aperispastwj (A.V. "without distraction") in 1 Cor. vii. 35.
1090 Eccles. i. 13; Eccles. iii. 10.
1091 Ag. Jov. i. 13.
1092 Ag. Jov. i. 14.
1093 Nu. xx. 17.
1094 Eccles. vii. 16.
1095 Ag. Jov. i. 14.
1096 1 Cor. vii. 9.
1097 1 Tim. v. 11, 1 Tim. v. 12, R.V.
1098 1 Tim. v. 15.
1099 1 Cor. vii. 40.
1100 Ag. Jov. i. 14.
1101 Ag. Jov. i. 15.
1102 1 Cor. vi. 12.
1103 Eph. v. 23, Eph. v. 24.
1104 Ag. Jov. i. 9.
1105 Ag. Jov. i. 23.
1106 Viduitas vel continentia.
1107 Ag. Jov. i. 33.
1108 Ag. Jov. i. 40.
1109 Rev. xiv. 3.
1110 Rev. xiv. 4.
1111 Joh. ii. 1, Joh. ii. 2.
1112 Ag. Jov. i. 40.
1113 2 Tim. ii. 20, 2 Tim. ii. 21.
1114 I.e. continence in marriage.
1115 Virg. A. xi. 374, 5.
1116 Aliud esse gumnastikwj scribere, aliud dogmatikwj. The words do not appear to be used in this sense in the extant works of Aristotle.
1117 Plaut. Aul. ii. 2, 18.
1118 The reply of Origen to Celsus is still extant; those of Methodius, Eusebius and Apollinaris to Porphyry have perished. Cf. Letter LXX.
1119 Two philosophic opponents of Christianity who flourished, the first in the second, the second in the third, century of our era.
1120 Matt. xiii. 10-17.
1121 Isa. xxiv. 16, Vulg.