strength to aspire to the highest, an expedient to avoid greater evil: in this sense it receives the sanction of the Church in order that the bond may be indissoluble. But celibacy and virginity are set up as the higher consecration of Christianity through which one enters the ranks of the elect. Through these alone does one attain the victor's crown, which even at the present day is signified by the wreath upon the coffin of the unmarried, and also by that which the bride lays aside on the day of her marriage.
A piece of evidence upon this point, which certainly comes to us from the primitive times of Christianity, is the pregnant answer of the Lord, quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus (Strom, iii. 6 et 9) from the Gospel of the Egyptians: "(
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(Salomæ interroganti "quousgue vigebit mors?" Dominus "quoadusque" inquit "vos, mulieres, paritis").
"(Greek characters)" (Hoc est, quamdiu operabuntur cupiditates), adds Clement, c. 9, with which he at once connects the famous passage, Rom. v. 12. Further on, c. 13, he quotes the words of Cassianus:
"(Greek characters)"
(Cum interrogaret Salome, quando cognoscentur ea, de quibus interrogabat, ait Dominus: "quando pudoris indumentum conculcaveritis, et quando duo facto fuerint unum, et masculum cum fæmina nec masculum nec fæmineum"), i.e., when she no longer needs the veil of modesty, since all distinction of sex will have disappeared.
With regard to this point the heretics have certainly gone furthest: even in the second century the Tatianites or Encratites, the Gnostics, the Marcionites, the Montanists, Valentinians, and Cassians; yet only because with reckless consistency they gave honour to the truth, and therefore, in accordance with the spirit of Christianity, they taught perfect continence; while the Church prudently declared to be
