To Olympias, A.D. 404. (On the Virginal Life, Ii., T. Iii., P. 542.)
Virginity is so great a thing, and requires so much labour, that when Christ had come down from heaven in order to make men angels, and to sow the heavenly life on earth, He did not venture even then to enjoin it or to make a law of it, but He did teach death to self, than which there is nothing harder. He taught men to crucify themselves, always to do good to their enemies, yet He did not make a law of virginity. He left it to the free-will of His hearers, saying, Let him who can, take it. It is a weighty undertaking: it has arduous wrestlings with the sweat of combat, and its path is rugged and precipitous. This is plainly shown by those in the Old Law, who were full of good deeds. For Moses, that great man who summed up the prophets in his person, the intimate friend of God, who enjoyed so much favour with Him as to be able to snatch six hundred thousand from the chastisement of a divine stroke, and was so great as to command the sea, who parted the ocean, drew water from the rock, and transformed the atmosphere, who changed the Nile’s waters into blood, who opposed Pharaoh with an army of frogs and locusts, and changed the whole face of creation, and worked a thousand other wonders, and many virtuous deeds,—for he was remarkable in every way,—yet he could not even look at these wrestlings, but needed marriage and the society of his wife, with its security. He dared not launch himself on the ocean of virginity fearing its waves. Then there was the patriarch who immolated his son and was strong enough to tread upon the most tyrannical of nature’s feelings. He had courage to sacrifice his son, that son being Isaac, in the bloom of his age, in the very flower of his youth, his own and only-begotten son, vouchsafed to him contrary to all hope, and full of righteousness, his one stay in his old age. He it was who led this son forth to the mountain for that consummation, and prepared the altar and laid the wood upon it, who placed the victim in readiness, and drew the sword and held it to his son’s neck. For he who was of adamant, or rather harder than adamant, both held him for slaughter and drew the knife. He who was thus firm by nature increased his natural fortitude by the mortification of his will, and gave proof of angelical calmness in his deeds. Yet the man who could encounter so great a battle, and go beyond nature itself, dared not face the combats of virginity. He also dreaded its wrestlings, and took to himself the comfort of marriage.