Here you will find a compilation of the texts of Augustine cited or mentioned in the book Paths of Love.
On the Good of Marriage
- It is good to
marry, because it is good to have offspring, to be the mother of a
family. But it is better not to marry, because it is better not to need
marriage for human fellowship. For the human race is now in such
a condition, that from those who are not continent--not only from those
who marry, but also from those who out of lust have illicit concubinage
(the good creator making what is good from their evils), numerous offspring and abundant successors are not lacking with whom holy friendship may be had.
- In
the first ages of the human race, especially in order to propagate the
people of God, through which the prince and savior of all peoples was
both prophesied and born, it was as it ought to be that holy
persons used the good of marriage not for its own sake, but for the
sake of something else. But now, when an abundance of spiritual
kinship surges up on all sides from all nations, with whom we may enter
holy and sincere fellowship, even those who desire to be joined in
marriage only for the sake of children should be advised to pursue
instead the larger good of continence.
- But these upstarts, how
they murmur! "What? If," they say, "all man wish to abstain from all
intercourse, from what source will the human race continue?
- Would
that all would wish this, as long as it were in charity and from a
pure heart and good conscience and faith unfeigned! Much more
quickly would the city of God be filled up and the end of the age
hastened.
- What else, indeed, does the Apostle appear to exhort,
when he says, speaking about this topic, "I would wish all to be as
myself," or in this passage, "I say, brethren: the time is short; now
it remains that those who have wives should be as those who do not have
them, and those who weep, as though they were not weeping, and those
who rejoice, as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy, as
those they had no good, and those who use this word, as though they
were not using it; for the form of this world is passing away. I want
you to be without solicitude"? Then he adds: "He who is without a wife,
thinks on the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But he who
is joined in marriage, thinks on the affairs of the world, how to
please his wife. And he is divided. The unmarried woman and the virgin
is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and
spirit; but she who is married, is anxious about the affairs of the
world, how to please her husband." Hence it seems to me that in this
time only those who are not continent should marry, according to that
statement of the same apostle: "But if they are not continent, let them
marry; for it is better to marry than to burn." Nevertheless for them
marriage is not a sin, though if it were chosen in comparison with
fornication, it would be a lesser sin than fornication, but still a
sin.
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