his lust on the bodies of continent Christians._
Let not your life, then, be a burden to you, ye faithful servants of
Christ, though your chastity was made the sport of your enemies. You
have a grand and true consolation, if you maintain a good conscience,
and know that you did not consent to the sins of those who were
permitted to commit sinful outrage upon you. And if you should ask
why this permission was granted, indeed it is a deep providence
of the Creator and Governor of the world; and "unsearchable are
His judgments, and His ways past finding out."[77] Nevertheless,
faithfully interrogate your own souls, whether ye have not been
unduly puffed up by your integrity, and continence, and chastity;
and whether ye have not been so desirous of the human praise that is
accorded to these virtues, that ye have envied some who possessed
them. I, for my part, do not know your hearts, and therefore I make
no accusation; I do not even hear what your hearts answer when you
question them. And yet, if they answer that it is as I have supposed
it might be, do not marvel that you have lost that by which you can
win men's praise, and retain that which cannot be exhibited to men.
If you did not consent to sin, it was because God added His aid
to His grace that it might not be lost, and because shame before
men succeeded to human glory that it might not be loved. But in
both respects even the fainthearted among you have a consolation,
approved by the one experience, chastened by the other; justified
by the one, corrected by the other. As to those whose hearts, when
interrogated, reply that they have never been proud of the virtue of
virginity, widowhood, or matrimonial chastity, but, condescending
to those of low estate, rejoiced with trembling in these gifts of
God, and that they have never envied any one the like excellences
of sanctity and purity, but rose superior to human applause, which
is wont to be abundant in proportion to the rarity of the virtue
applauded, and rather desired that their own number be increased,
than that by the smallness of their numbers each of them should be
conspicuous;--even such faithful women, I say, must not complain
that permission was given to the barbarians so grossly to outrage
them; nor must they allow themselves to believe that God overlooked
their character when He permitted acts which no one with impunity
commits. For some most flagrant and wicked desires are allowed free
play at present by the secret judgment of God, and are reserved to
the public and final judgment. Moreover, it is possible that those
Christian women, who are unconscious of any undue pride on account of
their virtuous chastity, whereby they sinlessly suffered the violence
of their captors, had yet some lurking infirmity which might have
betrayed them into a proud and contemptuous bearing, had they not
been subjected to the humiliation that befell them in the taking
of the city. As, therefore, some men were removed by death, that
no wickedness might change their disposition, so these women were
outraged lest prosperity should corrupt their modesty. Neither those
women, then, who were already puffed up by the circumstance that
they were still virgins, nor those who might have been so puffed up
had they not been exposed to the violence of the enemy, lost their
chastity, but rather gained humility: the former were saved from
pride already cherished, the latter from pride that would shortly
have grown upon them.
We must further notice that some of those sufferers may have
conceived that continence is a bodily good, and abides so long as
the body is inviolate, and did not understand that the purity both
of the body and the soul rests on the stedfastness of the will
strengthened by God's grace, and cannot be forcibly taken from an
unwilling person. From this error they are probably now delivered.
For when they reflect how conscientiously they served God, and when
they settle again to the firm persuasion that He can in nowise
desert those who so serve Him, and so invoke His aid; and when they
consider, what they cannot doubt, how pleasing to Him is chastity,
they are shut up to the conclusion that He could never have permitted
these disasters to befall His saints, if by them that saintliness
could be destroyed which He Himself had bestowed upon them, and
delights to see in them.