Page:Catechismoftrent.djvu/295

 Paul: "Fly fornication: every sin that a man doth is without the body; but he that committeth fornication, sinneth against his own body." The reason is, that, by violating its sanctity, he does an injury to his own body; and hence the Apostle writing to the Thessalonians says: " This is the will of God, your sanctification; that you should abstain from fornication, that every one of you should know how to possess his vessel in sanctification and honour; not in the passion of lust, like the Gentiles that know not God." Again, it is an aggravation of the sinner's guilt, that by the foul crime of fornication, the Christian makes the members of Christ the members of an harlot, according to these words of St. Paul: " Know you not that your bodies are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them the members of an harlot? God forbid; or know you not, that he who is joined to an harlot is made one body?" Moreover, a Christian, as St. Paul testifies, is " the temple of the Holy Ghost;" and to violate this temple, what is it but to expel the Holy Ghost?

But the crime of adultery involves that of grievous injustice. If, as the Apostle says, they who are joined in wedlock are so subject to each other, that neither has power or right over his or her body, but both are bound, as it were, by a mutual bond of subjection, the husband to accommodate himself to the will of the wife, the wife to the will of the husband; most certainly if either dissociate his or her person, which is the right of the other, from him or her to whom it is bound, the offender is guilty of an act of flagrant injustice, and of a grievous crime.

As dread of infamy strongly stimulates to the performance of duty, and deters from the commission of crime, the pastor will also teach that adultery brands its guilty perpetrators with an indelible stigma: " He that is an adulterer," says Solomon, " for the folly of his heart shall destroy his own soul: he gathereth to himself shame and dishonour, and his reproach shall not be blotted out."

The grievousness of the sin of adultery may be easily inferred from the severity of its punishment. According to the law promulgated by God in the Old Testament, the adulterer was condemned to be stoned to death; and even for the criminal passion of one man, (the facts are recorded in the inspired Volume) not only the perpetrators of the crime, but also, as we read with regard to the Sichemites, sometimes the inhabitants of an entire city have been destroyed. The Sacred Scriptures abound with examples of the divine vengeance invoked by such crimes; such as the destruction of Sodom and of the neigh bouring cities, the punishment of the Israelites who committed fornication in the wilderness with the daughters of Moab, and