initiated by the immediate appearance of God upon earth. And the second also refers only to marriage as an institution of the Old Testament. Certain Jews proposed the question whether it were lawful for a man to separate from his wife; and the most appropriate way of dealing with this question was the answer above cited. He who has once concluded a marriage ought to hold it sacred. Marriage is intrinsically an indulgence to the weakness or rather the strength of the flesh, an evil which therefore must be restricted as much as possible. The indissolubleness of marriage is a nimbus, a sacred irradiance, which expresses precisely the opposite of what minds, dazzled and perturbed by its lustre, seek beneath it. Marriage in itself is, in the sense of perfected Christianity, a sin,[1] or rather a weakness, which is permitted and forgiven thee only on condition that thou for ever limitest thyself to a single wife. In short, marriage is hallowed only in the Old Testament, but not in the New. The New Testament knows a higher, a supernatural principle, the mystery of unspotted virginity.[2] “He who can receive it let him receive it.” “The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.” Thus in heaven there is no marriage; the principle of sexual love is excluded from heaven as an earthly, worldly principle. But the heavenly life is the true, perfected, eternal life of the Christian. Why then should I, who am destined for heaven, form a tie which is unloosed in my true destination? Why should I, who am potentially a heavenly being, not realize this possibility even here?[3] Marriage is already proscribed from my mind, my heart, since it is expelled
- ↑ “Perfectum autem esse nolle delinquere est.”—Hieronymus (Epist. ad Heliodorum de laude Vitae solit.). Let me observe once for all that I interpret the biblical passages concerning marriage in the sense in which they have been interpreted by the history of Christianity.
- ↑ “The marriage state is nothing new or unwonted, and is lauded and held good even by heathens according to the judgment of reason.”—Luther (Th. ii. p. 377a).
- ↑ “Praesumendum est hos qui intra paradisum recipi volunt debere cessare ab ea re, aqua paradisus intactus est.”—Tertullian (de Exhort, cast. c. 13). “Coelibatus angelorum est imitatio.”—Jo. Damasceni (Orthod. Fidei, 1. iv. c 25).
