Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Tertullian: Part Fourth/To His Wife/I/Chapter 8

Chapter VIII.&#8212;Conclusion.

For, concerning the honours which widowhood enjoys in the sight of God, there is a brief summary in one saying of His through the prophet:&#160; &#8220;Do thou justly to the widow and to the orphan; and come ye, let us reason, saith the .&#8221;&#160; These two names, left to the care of the divine mercy, in proportion as they are destitute of human aid, the Father of all undertakes to defend.&#160; Look how the widow&#8217;s benefactor is put on a level with the widow herself, whose champion shall &#8220;reason with the !&#8221;&#160; Not to virgins, I take it, is so great a gift given.&#160; Although in their case perfect integrity and entire sanctity shall have the nearest vision of the face of God, yet the widow has a task more toilsome, because it is easy not to crave after that which you know not, and to turn away from what you have never had to regret. &#160; More glorious is the continence which is aware of its own right, which knows what it has seen.&#160; The virgin may possibly be held the happier, but the widow the more hardly tasked; the former in that she has always kept &#8220;the good,&#8221; the latter in that she has found &#8220;the good for herself.&#8221;&#160; In the former it is grace, in the latter virtue, that is crowned.&#160; For some things there are which are of the divine liberality, some of our own working.&#160; The indulgences granted by the Lord are regulated by their own grace; the things which are objects of man&#8217;s striving are attained by earnest pursuit.&#160; Pursue earnestly, therefore, the virtue of continence, which is modesty&#8217;s agent; industry, which allows not women to be &#8220;wanderers;&#8221; frugality, which scorns the world. &#160; Follow companies and conversations worthy of God, mindful of that short verse, sanctified by the apostle&#8217;s quotation of it, &#8220;Ill interviews good morals do corrupt.&#8221; &#160; Talkative, idle, winebibbing, curious tent-fellows, do the very greatest hurt to the purpose of widow-hood.&#160; Through talkativeness there creep in words unfriendly to modesty; through idleness they seduce one from strictness; through winebibbing they insinuate any and every evil; through curiosity they convey a spirit of rivalry in lust.&#160; Not one of such women knows how to speak of the good of single-husbandhood; for their &#8220;god,&#8221; as the apostle says, &#8220;is their belly;&#8221; and so, too, what is neighbour to the belly.

These considerations, dearest fellow-servant, I commend to you thus early, handled throughout superfluously indeed, after the apostle, but likely to prove a solace to you, in that (if so it shall turn out ) you will cherish my memory in them.