Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Tertullian: Part Fourth/On Exhortation to Chastity/Chapter 10

Chapter X.&#8212;Application of the Subject.&#160; Advantages of Widowhood.

Renounce we things carnal, that we may at length bear fruits spiritual.&#160; Seize the opportunity&#8212;albeit not earnestly desired, yet favourable&#8212;of not having any one to whom to pay a debt, and by whom to be (yourself) repaid!&#160; You have ceased to be a debtor.&#160; Happy man!&#160; You have released your debtor; sustain the loss.&#160; What if you come to feel that what we have called a loss is a gain?&#160; For continence will be a mean whereby you will traffic in a mighty substance of sanctity; by parsimony of the flesh you will gain the Spirit.&#160; For let us ponder over our conscience itself, (to see) how different a man feels himself when he chances to be deprived of his wife.&#160; He savours spiritually.&#160; If he is making prayer to the Lord, he is near heaven.&#160; If he is bending over the Scriptures, he is &#8220;wholly in them.&#8221; &#160; If he is singing a psalm, he satisfies himself. &#160; If he is adjuring a demon, he is confident in himself.&#160; Accordingly, the apostle added (the recommendation of) a temporary abstinence for the sake of adding an efficacy to prayers, that we might know that what is profitable &#8220;for a time&#8221; should be always practised by us, that it may be always profitable.&#160; Daily, every moment, prayer is necessary to men; of course continence (is so) too, since prayer is necessary.&#160; Prayer proceeds from conscience.&#160; If the conscience blush, prayer blushes.&#160; It is the spirit which conducts prayer to God.&#160; If the spirit be self-accused of a blushing conscience, how will it have the hardihood to conduct prayer to the altar; seeing that, if prayer blush, the holy minister (of prayer) itself is suffused too?&#160; For there is a prophetic utterance of the Old Testament:&#160; &#8220;Holy shall ye be, because God is holy;&#8221; and again:&#160; &#8220;With the holy thou shalt be sanctified; and with the innocent man thou shalt be innocent; and with the elect, elect.&#8221; &#160; For it is our duty so to walk in the Lord&#8217;s discipline as is &#8220;worthy,&#8221; not according to the filthy concupiscences of the flesh.&#160; For so, too, does the apostle say, that &#8220;to savour according to the flesh is death, but to savour according to the spirit is life eternal in Jesus Christ our Lord.&#8221; &#160; Again, through the holy prophetess Prisca the Gospel is thus preached:&#160; that &#8220;the holy minister knows how to minister sanctity.&#8221;&#160; &#8220;For purity,&#8221; says she, &#8220;is harmonious, and they see visions; and, turning their face downward, they even hear manifest voices, as salutary as they are withal secret.&#8221;&#160; If this dulling (of the spiritual faculties), even when the carnal nature is allowed room for exercise in first marriage, averts the Holy Spirit; how much more when it is brought into play in second marriage!