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Let not your life, then, be a burden to you, ye faithful servants of
Christ, though your chastity was made the sport of your enemies. You
have a grand and true consolation, if you maintain a good conscience,
and know that you did not consent to the sins of those who were
permitted to commit sinful outrage upon you. And if you should ask why
this permission was granted, indeed it is a deep providence of the
Creator and Governor of the world; and "unsearchable are His
judgments, and His ways past finding out." Nevertheless,
faithfully interrogate your own souls, whether ye have not been unduly
puffed up by your integrity, and continence, and chastity; and
whether ye have not been so desirous of the human praise that is
accorded to these virtues, that ye have envied some who possessed
them. I, for my part, do not know your hearts, and therefore I
make no accusation; I do not even hear what your hearts answer when
you question them. And yet, if they answer that it is as I have
supposed it might be, do not marvel that you have lost that by which
you can win men's praise, and retain that which cannot be exhibited to
men. If you did not consent to sin, it was because God added His
aid to His grace that it might not be lost, and because shame before
men succeeded to human glory that it might not be loved. But in both
respects even the faint-hearted among you have a consolation, approved
by the one experience, chastened by the other; justified by the one,
corrected by the other. As to those whose hearts, when interrogated,
reply that they have never been proud of the virtue of virginity,
widowhood, or matrimonial chastity, but, condescending to those of
low estate, rejoiced with trembling in these gifts of God, and that
they have never envied any one the like excellences of sanctity and
purity, but rose superior to human applause, which is wont to be
abundant in proportion to the rarity of the virtue applauded, and
rather desired that their own number be increased, than that by the
smallness of their numbers each of them should be conspicuous;, even
such faithful women, I say, must not complain that permission was
given to the barbarians so grossly to outrage them; nor must they allow
themselves to believe that God overlooked their character when He
permitted acts which no one with impunity commits. For some most
flagrant and wicked desires are allowed free play at present by the
secret judgment of God, and are reserved to the public and final
judgment. Moreover, it is possible that those Christian women, who
are unconscious of any undue pride on account of their virtuous
chastity, whereby they sinlessly suffered the violence of their
captors, had yet some lurking infirmity which might have betrayed them
into a proud and contemptuous bearing, had they not been subjected to
the humiliation that befell them in the taking of the city. As,
therefore, some men were removed by death, that no wickedness might
change their disposition, so these women were outraged lest prosperity
should corrupt their modesty. Neither those women then, who were
already puffed up by the circumstance that they were still virgins, nor
those who might have been so puffed up had they not been exposed to the
violence of the enemy, lost their chastity, but rather gained
humility; the former were saved from pride already cherished, the
latter from pride that would shortly have grown upon them.
We must further notice that some of those sufferers may have conceived
that continence is a bodily good, and abides so long as the body is
inviolate, and did not understand that the purity both of the body and
the soul rests on the steadfastness of the will strengthened by God's
grace, and cannot be forcibly taken from an unwilling person. From
this error they are probably now delivered. For when they reflect how
conscientiously they served God, and when they settle again to the
firm persuasion that He can in nowise desert those who so serve Him,
and so invoke His aid and when they consider, what they cannot doubt,
how pleasing to Him is chastity, they are shut up to the conclusion
that He could never have permitted these disasters to befall His
saints, if by them that saintliness could be destroyed which He
Himself had bestowed upon them, and delights to see in them.
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