Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Tertullian: Part Fourth/On Exhortation to Chastity/Chapter 9

Chapter IX.&#8212;Second Marriage a Species of Adultery, Marriage Itself Impugned, as Akin to Adultery.

If we look deeply into his meanings, and interpret them, second marriage will have to be termed no other than a species of fornication.&#160; For, since he says that married persons make this their solicitude, &#8220;how to please one another&#8221; (not, of course, morally, for a good solicitude he would not impugn); and (since), he wishes them to be understood to be solicitous about dress, and ornament, and every kind of personal attraction, with a view to increasing their power of allurement; (since), moreover, to please by personal beauty and dress is the genius of carnal concupiscence, which again is the cause of fornication:&#160; pray, does second marriage seem to you to border upon fornication, since in it are detected those ingredients which are appropriate to fornication?&#160; The Lord Himself said, &#8220;Whoever has seen a woman with a view to concupiscence has already violated her in his heart.&#8221; &#160; But has he who has seen her with a view to marriage done so less or more?&#160; What if he have even married her?&#8212;which he would not do had he not desired her with a view to marriage, and seen her with a view to concupiscence; unless it is possible for a wife to be married whom you have not seen or desired.&#160; I grant it makes a wide difference whether a married man or an unmarried desire another woman.&#160; Every woman, (however), even to an unmarried man, is &#8220;another,&#8221; so long as she belongs to some one else; nor yet is the mean through which she becomes a married woman any other than that through which withal (she becomes) an adulteress.&#160; It is laws which seem to make the difference between marriage and fornication; through diversity of illicitness, not through the nature of the thing itself.&#160; Besides, what is the thing which takes place in all men and women to produce marriage and fornication?&#160; Commixture of the flesh, of course; the concupiscence whereof the Lord put on the same footing with fornication.&#160; &#8220;Then,&#8221; says (some one), &#8220;are you by this time destroying first&#8212;that is, single&#8212;marriage too?&#8221;&#160; And (if so) not without reason; inasmuch as it, too, consists of that which is the essence of fornication. &#160; Accordingly, the best thing for a man is not to touch a woman; and accordingly the virgin&#8217;s is the principal sanctity, because it is free from affinity with fornication.&#160; And since these considerations may be advanced, even in the case of first and single marriage, to forward the cause of continence, how much more will they afford a prejudgment for refusing second marriage?&#160; Be thankful if God has once for all granted you indulgence to marry.&#160; Thankful, moreover, you will be if you know not that He has granted you that indulgence a second time.&#160; But you abuse indulgence if you avail yourself of it without moderation.&#160; Moderation is understood (to be derived) from modus, a limit.&#160; It does not suffice you to have fallen back, by marrying, from that highest grade of immaculate virginity; but you roll yourself down into yet a third, and into a fourth, and perhaps into more, after you have failed to be continent in the second stage; inasmuch as he who has treated about contracting second marriages has not willed to prohibit even more.&#160; Marry we, therefore, daily. &#160; And marrying, let us be overtaken by the last day, like Sodom and Gomorrah; that day when the &#8220;woe&#8221; pronounced over &#8220;such as are with child and giving suck&#8221; shall be fulfilled, that is, over the married and the incontinent:&#160; for from marriage result wombs, and breasts, and infants.&#160; And when an end of marrying?&#160; I believe after the end of living!