lust, while the mind remains inviolate._
But is there a fear that even another's lust may pollute the
violated? It will not pollute, if it be another's: if it pollute,
it is not another's, but is shared also by the polluted. But since
purity is a virtue of the soul, and has for its companion virtue
the fortitude which will rather endure all ills than consent to
evil; and since no one, however magnanimous and pure, has always
the disposal of his own body, but can control only the consent and
refusal of his will, what sane man can suppose that, if his body be
seized and forcibly made use of to satisfy the lust of another, he
thereby loses his purity? For if purity can be thus destroyed, then
assuredly purity is no virtue of the soul; nor can it be numbered
among those good things by which the life is made good, but among the
good things of the body, in the same category as strength, beauty,
sound and unbroken health, and, in short, all such good things as may
be diminished without at all diminishing the goodness and rectitude
of our life. But if purity be nothing better than these, why should
the body be perilled that it may be preserved? If, on the other hand,
it belongs to the soul, then not even when the body is violated is it
lost. Nay more, the virtue of holy continence, when it resists the
uncleanness of carnal lust, sanctifies even the body, and therefore
when this continence remains unsubdued, even the sanctity of the body
is preserved, because the will to use it holily remains, and, so far
as lies in the body itself, the power also.
For the sanctity of the body does not consist in the integrity of
its members, nor in their exemption from all touch; for they are
exposed to various accidents which do violence to and wound them,
and the surgeons who administer relief often perform operations that
sicken the spectator. A midwife, suppose, has (whether maliciously or
accidentally, or through unskilfulness) destroyed the virginity of
some girl, while endeavouring to ascertain it: I suppose no one is so
foolish as to believe that, by this destruction of the integrity of
one organ, the virgin has lost anything even of her bodily sanctity.
And thus, so long as the soul keeps this firmness of purpose which
sanctifies even the body, the violence done by another's lust makes
no impression on this bodily sanctity, which is preserved intact by
one's own persistent continence. Suppose a virgin violates the oath
she has sworn to God, and goes to meet her seducer with the intention
of yielding to him, shall we say that as she goes she is possessed
even of bodily sanctity, when already she has lost and destroyed
that sanctity of soul which sanctifies the body? Far be it from us
to so misapply words. Let us rather draw this conclusion, that while
the sanctity of the soul remains even when the body is violated,
the sanctity of the body is not lost; and that, in like manner,
the sanctity of the body is lost when the sanctity of the soul is
violated, though the body itself remain intact. And therefore a woman
who has been violated by the sin of another, and without any consent
of her own, has no cause to put herself to death; much less has she
cause to commit suicide in order to avoid such violation, for in
that case she commits certain homicide to prevent a crime which is
uncertain as yet, and not her own.