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| Remarks on Some of the “Dangers and Wounds” Referred to in the Preceding Chapter.
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Chapter
III.—Remarks on Some of the “Dangers and Wounds”
Referred to in the Preceding Chapter.
If these things are so, it is certain that
believers contracting marriages with Gentiles are guilty of
fornication,459
| 459 Comp. de Pa., c.
xii. (mid.), and the note there. | and are to be
excluded from all communication with the brotherhood, in accordance
with the letter of the apostle, who says that “with persons of
that kind there is to be no taking of food even.”460
Or shall we “in that
day”461
| 461 The translator has
ventured to read “die illo” here, instead of
Oehler’s “de illo.” | produce (our)
marriage certificates before the Lord’s tribunal, and allege that
a marriage such as He Himself has forbidden has been duly
contracted? What is prohibited (in the passage just referred to) is not
“adultery;” it is not “fornication.” The
admission of a strange man (to your couch) less violates “the
temple of God,”462
less commingles
“the members of Christ” with the members of an
adulteress.463
So far as I
know, “we are not our own, but bought with a
price;”464
and what kind of
price? The blood of God.465
| 465 See the last reference,
and Acts xx. 28, where the mss. vary between Θεοῦ and Κυρίου. | In hurting this
flesh of ours, therefore, we hurt Him directly.466
| 466 De proximo. Comp.
de Pa., cc. v. and vii. “Deo de proximo
amicus;” “de proximo in Deum
peccat.” |
What did that man mean who said that “to wed a
‘stranger’ was indeed a sin, but a very small one?”
whereas in other cases (setting aside the injury done to the flesh
which pertains to the Lord) every voluntary sin against the Lord
is great. For, in as far as there was a power of avoiding
it, in so far is it burdened with the charge of contumacy.
Let us now recount the other dangers or wounds (as
I have said) to faith, foreseen by the apostle; most grievous not to
the flesh merely, but likewise to the spirit too. For who would
doubt that faith undergoes a daily process of obliteration by
unbelieving intercourse? “Evil confabulations corrupt good
morals;”467
| 467 Comp. b. i. c. viii.
sub. fin., where Tertullian quotes the same passage, but renders
it somewhat differently. | how much more
fellowship of life, and indivisible intimacy! Any and every
believing woman must of necessity obey God. And how can she serve
two lords468
—the Lord, and
her husband—a Gentile to boot? For in obeying a Gentile she
will carry out Gentile practices,—personal attractiveness,
dressing of the head, worldly469
elegancies, baser
blandishments, the very secrets even of matrimony tainted: not,
as among the saints, where the duties of the sex are discharged with
honour (shown) to the very necessity (which makes them incumbent), with
modesty and temperance, as beneath the eyes of God.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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