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But they fancy they bring a conclusive charge against Christianity,
when they aggravate the horror of captivity by adding that not only
wives and unmarried maidens, but even consecrated virgins, were
violated. But truly, with respect to this, it is not Christian
faith, nor piety, nor even the virtue of chastity, which is hemmed
into any difficulty; the only difficulty is so to treat the subject as
to satisfy at once modesty and reason. And in discussing it we shall
not be so careful to reply to our accusers as to comfort our friends.
Letthis, therefore, in the first place, be laid down as an
unassailable position, that the virtue which makes the life good has
its throne in the soul, and thence rules the members of the body,
which becomes holy in virtue of the holiness of the will; and that
while the will remains firm and unshaken, nothing that another person
does with the body, or upon the body, is any fault of the person who
suffers it, so long as he cannot escape it without sin. But as not
only pain may be inflicted, but lust gratified on the body of another,
whenever anything of this latter kind takes place, shame invades even a
thoroughly pure spirit from which modesty has not departed, shame,
lest that act which could not be suffered without some sensual
pleasure, should be believed to have been committed also with some
assent of the will.
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