The Bond of Marriage and the Call to Sobriety

It is irrational of animals to be held together without passion. For I saw with passion a bellowing ox, because having wandered from its companions it remained stuck, and a sheep being thrown into a pit and running through the mountains until it could reunite with the flock from which it was separated while grazing. And a goat, experiencing this same thing, even if it runs through many herds of kids, does not stand still until it finds its usual place and its own sharp-edged way.

Therefore, let us not be found more passionless toward friendship than the irrational ones who are rational, nor let us judge the marriage of a companion to be less honorable because of having become friendly in a short time through a small pretext. You see how even on the high road, men having mixed with one another, having gone under the same roof of a building or having shaded themselves at midday in a tree embracing them in the season of summer, make the encounter an occasion for genuine disposition; and even if they come to the road that divides, they do not depart from one another passionlessly, but they stand and weep, looking intently at one another, and each gives tokens of memory to carry; and having advanced a little, they turn back again and call out, and one prays for the other the spiritual things; and does a little time thus sharpen the friendship so acutely, that it becomes unchangeable to them and their departure is established?

But you, toward the one who is a sharer of life, act so contemptuously, as toward a vessel fallen or a cheap garment forgotten on a journey or a rag of the Melitians departing a house? And where is the disposition formed in the beginning? Where is the rest upon the one bed, the joining of the law, the strength of much and long habit, which is even transformed into nature and has a reason, and experience has shown? Having cut off everything more easily than Samson cut the cords of the Philistines (Judges 16).

Even if he is sober and a guardian of his disposition, he does not easily forget the life of the marriage even after it has departed, but he warms the children as a common deposit of the mother and of nature, and in them he seems to see the one who has gone. For one preserves the likeness of the mother's voice, another is drawn to much of the character, another is formed in the state of the character toward the one who bore him; and thus the father preserves many.

Having the living and manifest image of the marriage as an immortal pattern, he imagines the cohabitation toward it and for this reason does not conceive any unseemly thought. Not today, having entered the tomb, after a little time, does he prepare wedding feasts; nor does he hasten to a wedding dance again after the weeping and the groans; nor does he mix the black and mourning garment into a bridal attire; nor does he introduce a second marriage into the warm bed of the one who has departed; nor does he give the heavy name to the children.

He imitates the irrational and natural dignity of the birds. For they say that even that bird, having been separated from its mate, loves the widowship continuously and stands in opposition to the dove, making it easy toward polygamy.

Until this, let the man be cast heavily with accusations, and let the insults of ignorance sting him more densely with veils. If, however, an accusation of adultery is brought forward and such is provided as the defense for the separation, I will immediately shift my sympathy to the wronged one, and having prepared the argument against the adulteress, I will stand as a good ally to the man instead of an enemy, praising the one who fled the aggressor, the one who broke the bond to which he was bound with a shield or an echidna.

For by this, the Creator of all gives forgiveness first, as it is just for one who is suffering and rightly driving away the sickness of the house and the hearth. For marriage consists of these two: disposition and child-rearing, neither of which is saved after adultery. For the disposition is not one that turns away from another of goodwill; and child-rearing is lost when the children are poured out.

But regarding those leading toward this, the sin is stated in another hypothesis proportionately. Let both sides practice sobriety, the unbreakable bond of marriages. For where this is honored, there must always be both peace and longing, without the soul desiring any common and illegitimate passion, casting out the lawful and just affection.

This law of sobriety was established by God not for women only, but also for men. And those paying attention to the law-makers of this life are not without shame.