29.

Let us come to Ecclesiastes and adduce a few corroborative passages from him also. ¹“To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die: a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.” We brought forth young under the law with Moses, let us die under the Gospel with Christ. We planted in marriage, let us by chastity pluck up that which was planted. “A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing: a time to love, and a time to hate: a time for war, and a time for peace.” And at the same time he warns us not to prefer the law to the Gospel; nor to think that virgin purity is to be placed on a level with marriage: ²“Better,” he says, “is the end of a thing than the beginning thereof.” And he immediately adds: “Say not thou, what is the cause that the former days were better than these? for thou dost not inquire wisely concerning this.” And he gives the reason why the latter days are better than the former: ³“For wisdom with an inheritance is good.” Under the law carnal wisdom was followed by the sword of death; under the Gospel an eternal inheritance awaits spiritual wisdom. “Behold, this have I found, ⁴ saith the Preacher, one man among a thousand have I found; but a woman among all those have I not found. Behold this only have I found, that God made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.” He says that he had found man upright. Consider the force of the words. The word man comprehends both male and female. “But a woman,” he says, “among all these have I not found.” Let us read the beginning of Genesis, and we shall find Adam, that is man, called both male and female. Having then been created by God good and upright, by our own fault we have fallen to a worse condition; and that which in Paradise had been upright, when we left Paradise was corrupt. If you object that before they sinned there was a distinction in sex between male and female, and that they could without sin have come together, it is uncertain what might have happened. For we cannot know the judgements of God, and anticipate his sentence as we choose. What really happened is plain enough,—that they who in Paradise remained in perpetual virginity, when they were expelled from Paradise were joined together. Or if Paradise admits of marriage, and there is no difference between marriage and virginity, what prevented their previous intercourse even in Paradise? They are driven out of Paradise; and what they did not there, they do on earth; so that from the very earliest days of humanity virginity was consecrated by Paradise, and marriage by earth. ⁵“Let thy garments be always white.” The eternal whiteness of our garments is the purity of virginity. In the morning we sowed our seed, and in the evening let us not cease. Let us who served marriage under the law, serve virginity under the Gospel.