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But is there a fear that even another's lust may pollute the
violated? It will not pollute, if it be another's: if it pollute,
it is not another's, but is shared also by the polluted. But since
purity is a virtue of the soul, and has for its companion virtue, the
fortitude which will rather endure all ills than consent to evil; and
since no one, however magnanimous and pure, has always the disposal of
his own body, but can control only the consent and refusal of his
will, what sane man can suppose that, if his body be seized and
forcibly made use of to satisfy the lust of another, he thereby loses
his purity? For if purity can be thus destroyed, then assuredly
purity is no virtue of the soul; nor can it be numbered among those
good things by which the life is made good, but among the good things
of the body, in the same category as strength, beauty, sound and
unbroken health, and, in short, all such good things as may be
diminished without at all diminishing the goodness and rectitude of our
life. But if purity be nothing better than these, why should the body
be perilled that it may be preserved? If, on the other hand, it
belongs to the soul, then not even when the body is violated is it
lost. Nay more, the virtue of holy continence, when it resists the
uncleanness of carnal lust, sanctifies even the body, and therefore
when this continence remains unsubdued, even the sanctity of the body
is preserved, because the will to use it holily remains, and, so far
as lies in the body itself, the power also.
For the sanctity of the body does not consist in the integrity of its
members, nor in their exemption from all touch; for they are exposed
to various accidents which do violence to and wound them, and the
surgeons who administer relief often perform operations that sicken the
spectator. A midwife, suppose, has (whether maliciously or
accidentally, or through unskillfulness) destroyed the virginity of
some girl, while endeavoring to ascertain it: I suppose no one is so
foolish as to believe that, by this destruction of the integrity of one
organ, the virgin has lost anything even of her bodily sanctity. And
thus, so long as the soul keeps this firmness of purpose which
sanctifies even the body, the violence done by another's lust makes no
impression on this bodily sanctity, which is preserved intact by one's
own persistent continence. Suppose a virgin violates the oath she has
sworn to God, and goes to meet her seducer with the intention of
yielding to him, shall we say that as she goes she is possessed even of
bodily sanctity, when already she has lost and destroyed that sanctity
of soul which sanctifies the body? Far be it from us to so misapply
words. Let us rather draw this conclusion, that while the sanctity of
the soul remains even when the body is violated, the sanctity of the
body is not lost; and that, in like manner, the sanctity of the body
is lost when the sanctity of the soul is violated, though the body
itself remains intact. And therefore a woman who has been violated by
the sin of another, and without any consent of her own, has no cause
to put herself to death; much less has she cause to commit suicide in
order to avoid such violation, for in that case she commits certain
homicide to prevent a crime which is uncertain as yet, and not her
own.
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