Chapter VIII.--Arguments Drawn Even from Heathenish Laws to Discountenance Marriage with Unbelievers. The Happiness of Union Between Partners in the Faith Enlarged on in Conclusion.
Let us further inquire, as if we were in very deed inquisitors of divine sentences, whether they be lawfully (thus condemned). Even among the nations, do not all the strictest lords and most tenacious of discipline interdict their own slaves from marrying out of their own house?--in order, of course, that they may not run into lascivious excess, desert their duties, purvey their lords' goods to strangers. Yet, further, have not (the nations) decided that such women as have, after their lords' 1 formal warning, persisted in intercourse with other men's slaves, may be claimed as slaves? Shall earthly disciplines be held more strict than heavenly prescripts; so that Gentile women, if united to strangers, lose their liberty; ours conjoin to themselves the devil's slaves, and continue in their (former) position? Forsooth, they will deny that any formal warning has been given them by the Lord through His own apostle! 2
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Oehler refers us to Tac., Ann., xii. 53, and the notes on that passage. (Consult especially Orelli's edition.) ↩
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The translator inclines to think that Tertullian, desiring to keep up the parallelism of the last-mentioned case, in which (see note 1) the slave's master had to give the "warning," means by "domino" here, not "the Lord," who on his hypothesis is the woman's Master, not the slave's, but the "lord" of the "unbeliever," i.e., the devil: so that the meaning would be (with a bitter irony, especially if we compare the end of the last chapter, where "the Evil One" is said to "procure" these marriages, so far is he from "condemning" them): "Forsooth, they" (i.e., the Christian women) "will deny that a formal warning has been given them by the lord:" (of the unbelievers, i.e., the Evil One) "through an apostle of his!" If the other interpretation be correct, the reference will be to c. ii. above. ↩
