Volume III, Treatise IV, Chapter I

Of the Excellency of Chastity, and the Degrees by Which We Ought to Raise Ourselves to Perfection in This Virtue

‘Tas is the will of God, that you become holy, that you abstain from all uncleanness, and that every one of you keep your body entire and undefiled; for God has not called us to impurity, but to sanctity”—I. Thess., iv. 3, 4, etc. St. Bernard says, that chastity is meant here by the word sanctity: and our blessed Saviour himself observes, that chastity renders us like unto angels: “In the resurrection”, says he, “they shall neither marry nor be given in marriage, but be like the angels of Heaven” (Matthew 22:30) St. Cyprian speaks thus to virgins: you already enjoy part of the blessing which one day you shall fully possess in glory; for you are not inferior to angels, as long as you remain chaste and poor. In like manner Cassian assures us that no virtue renders us so like to angels as chastity, by the help of which we live in bodies, yet so as if we carried no flesh about us, being now transformed by it into pure spirits, according to these words of St. Paul, “‘ You live no longer in flesh, but in spirit” (Romans 8:9) And in this we are superior to the angels themselves, who being incorporeal, it is no wonder they live pure and spotless; but it certainly deserves far greater admiration, that man in this frail and mortal body, which continually wars against the spirit, should live as if he had no flesh about him.

Morever our blessed Saviour, to show how pleasing this virtue is to him, when the mystery of his incarnation was to be accomplished, chose a virgin for his mother, who by vow had consecrated her virginity to God, as the holy fathers observe. St. John also saw virgins follow the Lamb Jesus upon Mount Sion, that is in Heaven, wheresoever he went, and heard them sing a new song to him which none else could sing. “I saw”, says he, ‘‘the Lamb upon Mount Sion, and one hundred and forty-four thousand with him, singing, as it were, a new song, and which none else can sing, but only these hundred and forty-four thousand which he had redeemed from the Earth. These are such as were never defiled by women, they are virgins, who follow the Lamb wheresoever he goes” (Apocalypse 14:1,3) St. Gregory on this passage says, that virgins are described on the mountain with Christ, because the highest degree of glory is due to the merit of chastity.

St. John the Evangelist is styled in Scripture, “the disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 21:7),—and St. Jerom and St. Austin assign his virginity as the reason of this his title. And the holy Church in the office of St. John says, “that Jesus loved him more tenderly than the other apostles; the prerogative of his chastity claiming this privilege as its due; for he was not only a virgin when he called him to be an apostle, but remained so all his life’. And hence the words of the Proverbs are by some not unfitly applied to him, “he that loves purity of heart shall, by the grace of his discourse, be in the king’s favour” (Proverbs 22:11) It was on account of his virginity that our Saviour loved him so well as to permit him to sleep upon his own breast, and that he bestowed several favours upon him which he did not confer upon the rest of the apostles. Hence it was, that St. Peter, who had been married, durst not ask Jesus when he would eat his last supper, but desired St. John to propose the question for him. On Easter-day, blessed Magdalen bringing the news of Christ’s resurrection, St. Peter and St. John ran immediately to the monument, but St. John got thither first, At another time, when some of the apostles were fishing in a little boat upon the sea of Tiberias, Jesus stood on the shore, and there was none of them knew him but St. John, who said to St. Peter, “Look yonder, behold, it is our Lord”—John, xxi, 7. “There was none in the company”, says St. Jerom, “that was a virgin except John, and therefore one virgin knew another”. And what other reason was there but this, that induced our Saviour, by his dying words upon the cross, to recommend his mother to him, “who”, as St. Jerom says, “‘ recommended his virgin mother to his virgin disciple”?

Intending to be brief in this treatise, in imitation of our holy founder, I will not enlarge, or write a panegyric upon chastity, but will lay down the seven degrees of it wine Cas-

| | 13 B sian has established, and by which, as by so many steps, we can mount to the most sovereign perfection of this angelical virtue. The first degree, is not to suffer ourselves to be overcome by any impure thought or motion whatsoever. The second is, not to entertain such thoughts for a moment, but immediately to fly from them and remove the occasion of them. The third is, not to be moved at the sight of a woman. This degree is more perfect than the two former, by reason of our frail and vicious nature, which is too apt to rebel on such occasions. The fourth is, not to encourage, upon any account, the least unchaste motion of our body when we are awake. The fifth is, that when we treat of or study this matter, we do it with all tranquillity and purity of mind, and keep our imagination as steady and quiet as if we were studying architecture, the art of gardening, or any other subject of that nature. St. Ignatius attained this degree of perfection at the very first beginning of his conversion. The sixth is, not to have, even in our sleep, any impure fancies or unchaste dreams, which certainly is an argument of a pure heart, as well as of a memory freed from all those filthy representations. Whereas on the contrary, impure illusions of the night, though they happen without sin, yet prove that the sensual appetite is not yet subject to reason, and that the imagination still retains some of those bad ideas. The seventh and last degree is a particular grace, says Cassian, which God has bestowed upon some few, as upon the Abbot Serenus and some other saints, and consists in being freed, both asleep and awake, from all those motions of the flesh which nature alone excites in us. This shows that by virtue of this grace, our concupiscence is rendered so peaceable and obedient, that we, in some sort, enjoy the happiness and privilege, which man enjoyed in the state of innocence, and that “the body of sin is destroyed in us’ (Romans 6:6),—as St. Paul says. Grace works so powerfully in those that have arrived at this last degree, that it takes from sin all the force and power it usually has. They feel no disordered motions in their flesh, nor anything that tends that way—nay, they live in a body of flesh as if they had no flesh about them. I do not, however, mean to say, that these kinds of motions in the flesh, either in sleep or otherwise, are contrary to chastity, even when it is in the greatest perfection, since they are no more than a natural effect, and consequently may happen to the greatest saints. God by a special grace has exempted from these, some of his servants, whom he has been pleased to raise to the most sublime perfection. There are others whom he scarce permits to be molested by them; and he has been mercifully pleased to grant to others the grace of appeasing and suppressing the rebellion of their flesh so quickly and easily that they enjoyed a perpetual peace. These are the persons that live like angels, whom we ought to propose to ourselves for imitation, as St. Ignatius advises us in his constitutions, by forcing ourselves “to imitate their angelical purity”. And here it is to be observed, that the word “force” implies more than a bare essay, endeavour, or labour. The saint would have us offer violence to ourselves in this case, and even to use our utmost endeavours, as we ordinarily do in the most difficult enterprises. His meaning is, that we should employ all our force in order to make ourselves masters of this evangelical virtue— we must offer early violence to ourselves by a constant application to the practice of all the virtues, and particularly of mortification. For though chastity be the free gift of God, and placed beyond the reach of our endeavours, yet God requires that we should do as much as lies in us in order to obtain it; our endeavours being as it were the price by which it is to be purchased.

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