CHASTITY AND UNCHASTITY

Since I am still at the outset of my discussion of the details of conjugial love, and this love can only indistinctly and thus dimly be recognised, unless its opposite, unchastity, is somehow made visible; and since this is somehow or dimly made visible, when chastity is described together with unchastity, seeing that chastity is merely the removal of what is unchaste from the chaste, [I shall here say something about chastity and unchastity].* The latter part of this book will deal with unchastity, which is the direct opposite of chastity; it will there be described fully and in all its varieties under the heading The gross pleasures of folly on the subject of scortatory love. The nature of chastity and unchastity and of the people who show them will be set forth in the following order. (i) Chastity and unchastity are only attributed to marriages and matters relating to marriage. (ii) Chastity is only attributed to monogamous marriages, that is, between one man and one wife. (iii) Only Christian marriage can be chaste. (iv) Truly conjugial love is the height of chastity. (v) All the delights of truly conjugial love, even the lowest, are chaste. (vi) In the case of those whom the Lord makes spiritual, conjugial love is more and more purified, and it becomes chaste. (vii) The chastity of marriage comes about through the complete renunciation for religious reasons of promiscuous conduct. (viii) Chastity cannot be attributed to small children, or to boys and girls, or to young men and women, before they feel sexual love in themselves. (ix) Chastity cannot be attributed to those born eunuchs, or to those made eunuchs. (x) Chastity cannot be attributed to those who do not believe acts of adultery to be religious evils, much less to those who do not believe acts of adultery to be damaging to society. (xi) Chastity cannot be attributed to those who refrain from acts of adultery only for various outward reasons. (xii) Chastity cannot be attributed to those who believe marriages to be unchaste. (xiii) Chastity cannot be attributed to those who have renounced marriage by a vow of perpetual celibacy, unless there is and persists in them a love of a truly conjugial life. (xiv) The married state is preferable to the celibate.

An explanation of these points now follows. * The sentence as it stands is incomplete and needs to be finished in some such manner as that here proposed. It is also necessary to change non 'not' before 'chastity' to nam, here translated 'seeing that'. See further 147.