But how many are there who rush greedily to their eating and drinking, and make their
whole life to consist in them, as if they were the very reason for living. For whereas men
really eat to live, they think that they live to eat. These will every wise man condemn, and
holy Scripture especially, all gluttons, drunkards, gormandizers, “whose god is their belly.”1770
Nothing but the lust of the flesh, and not the need of refreshment, carries them to the table.
These then fall upon their meat and drink. But they who descend to them from the duty of
maintaining life, do not live to eat, but eat to live. Accordingly, if the offer were made to
these wise and temperate persons that they should live without food or drink, with what
great joy would they embrace the boon! that now they might not even be forced to descend
to that into which it had never been their custom to fall, but that they might be lifted up al-
ways in the Lord, and no necessity of repairing the wastings of their body might make them
lay aside their fixed attention towards Him. How think ye that the holy Elias received the
cruse of water, and the cake of bread, to satisfy him for forty days?1771 With great joy no
doubt, because he eat and drank to live, and not to serve his lust. But try to bring this about,
if you could, for a man who, like the beast in his stall, places his whole blessedness and
happiness in the table. He would hate your boon, and thrust it from him, and look upon it
as a punishment. And so in that other duty of marriage, sensual men seek for wives only to
satisfy their sensuality, and therefore at length are scarce contented even with their wives.
And oh! I would that if they cannot or will not cure their sensuality, they would not suffer
it to go beyond that limit which conjugal duty prescribes, I mean even that which is granted
to infirmity. Nevertheless, if you were to say to such a man, “why do you marry?” he would
answer perhaps for very shame, “for the sake of children.” But if any one in whom he could
have unhesitating credit were to say to him, “God is able to give, and yea, and will give you
children without your having any intercourse with your wife;” he would assuredly be driven
to confess that it was not for the sake of children that he was seeking for a wife. Let him then
acknowledge his infirmity, and so receive that which he pretended to receive only as matter
of duty.
25. It was thus those holy men of former times, those men of God sought and wished
for children. For this one end—the procreation of children, was their intercourse and union
with their wives. It is for this reason that they were allowed to have a plurality of wives. For
if immoderateness in these desires could be well-pleasing to God, it would have been as
much allowed at that time for one woman to have many husbands, as one husband many
wives. Why then had all chaste women no more than one husband, but one man had many
wives, except that for one man to have many wives is a means to the multiplication of a
family, whereas a woman would not give birth to more children, how many soever more
1770 Phil. iii. 19.
1771 1 Kings xix. 6.
545
Of the agreement of the evangelists Matthew and Luke in the generations…