De arte praedicatoria

The apostle Paul says: Let each man have his own wife, because of fornication.¹ Likewise: It is better to marry than to burn.²

The Lord, also establishing marriage in paradise, says: Increase and multiply.³ In the Gospel too Christ says: What God has joined together, let man not separate.⁴ Oh how great is the dignity of marriage, which had its beginning in paradise, which removes the vice of incontinence, which embraces within itself a heavenly sacrament: which preserves fidelity to the marriage bed, which retains an undivided partnership of life between spouses, which frees offspring from disgrace, which excuses carnal intercourse from guilt. For in this state the patriarchs were saved, in this state certain of the Apostles were chosen. Oh how great is the power of this sacrament, through which, lest anyone fall into the precipice of lust or incontinence, he is caught up by conjugal honesty! Oh how greatly he assaults honesty, who breaks fidelity to the marriage bed! When, having abandoned the marriage bed, he commits adultery elsewhere, he defiles the sacrament as far as it is in him; he sins against his own body, he divides the unity of matrimony, he breaks the laws of marriage. Oh how great is the danger in adultery, where one sins against God, where one's neighbor is offended, where murder is frequently perpetrated, where a legitimate son is often disinherited, where often a daughter marries her father, a sister her brother! Adultery is often the cause of manifold crime. For from adultery David fell into homicide; Reuben was subjected to his father's curse.

Now in commendation of marriage, Christ was born of a betrothed woman; at Cana of Galilee, a wedding was consecrated by his presence. But although carnal intercourse is excused from sin, it is nevertheless to be undertaken for the begetting of offspring, not for the pleasure of the flesh. Let the connected carnal communion, therefore, temper itself, by reason of place, by reason of time, by reason of religious duty. Let a man also observe a spiritual marriage between flesh and spirit, so that the flesh, as a wife, may obey the spirit, and the spirit, as a husband, may rule the flesh as a wife.

Let there be fidelity to the marriage bed, lest the flesh, abandoning the rule of the spirit, commit adultery with the world, or reason, seduced by the very enticement of the flesh, fornicate with it, according to that which is said, that he who loves his wife too passionately, is an adulterer. Let there also be there the hope of offspring, namely, the intention of good work: let there be there the sacrament of spiritual union, let good works be begotten as children; let there be there the intercourse of flesh and spirit as a rational union.