Chapter VI.—The Objection from the Polygamy of the Patriarchs Answered.

“But withal the blessed patriarchs,” you say, “made mingled alliances not only with more wives (than one), but with concubines likewise.”  Shall that, then, make it lawful for us also to marry without limit?  I grant that it will, if there still remain types—sacraments of something future—for your nuptials to figure; or if even now there is room for that command, “Grow and multiply;”27    Gen. i. 28. that is, if no other command has yet supervened:  “The time is already wound up; it remains that both they who have wives act as if they had not:”  for, of course, by enjoining continence, and restraining concubitance, the seminary of our race, (this latter command) has abolished that “Grow and multiply.”  As I think, moreover, each pronouncement and arrangement is (the act) of one and the same God; who did then indeed, in the beginning, send forth a sowing of the race by an indulgent laxity granted to the reins of connubial alliances, until the world should be replenished, until the material of the new discipline should attain to forwardness:  now, however, at the extreme boundaries of the times, has checked (the command) which He had sent out, and recalled the indulgence which He had granted; not without a reasonable ground for the extension (of that indulgence) in the beginning, and the limitation28    Repastinationis.  Comp. de Cult. Fem., l. ii. c. ix., repastinantes. of it in the end.  Laxity is always allowed to the beginning (of things).  The reason why any one plants a wood and lets it grow, is that at his own time he may cut it.  The wood was the old order, which is being pruned down by the new Gospel, in which withal “the axe has been laid at the roots.”29    Comp. Matt. iii. 10.  So, too, “Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth,”30    Ex. xxi. 24; Lev. xxiv. 20; Deut. xix. 21; Matt. v. 38. has now grown old, ever since “Let none render evil for evil”31    See Rom. xii. 17; Matt. v. 39; 1 Thess. v. 16. grew young.  I think, moreover, that even with a view to human institutions and decrees, things later prevail over things primitive.

CAPUT VI.

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Sed et benedicti, inquis, Patriarchae non modo pluribus uxoribus, verum etiam concubinis conjugia miscuerunt. Ergo propterea nobis quoque licebit innumerum nubere? Sane licebit, si adhuc typi futuri alicujus sacramenta supersunt, quos nuptiae tuae figurent; vel si etiam nunc locus est vocis illius: crescite et multiplicamini, id est, si nondum alia vox supervenit, tempus jam in collecto esse, restare ut et qui uxores habent, tanquam non habentes agant; utique enim continentiam indicens, et compescens concubitum, seminarium generis, abolefecit crescite illud et multiplicamini. Ut opinor autem, unius et ejusdem Dei utraque pronuntiatio et dispositio est: qui tum quidem in primordio sementem generis emisit, indultis conjugiorum habenis, donec mundus repleretur, 0921B donec novae disciplinae materia proficeret; nunc vero sub extremitatibus temporum compressit quod emiserat, et revocavit quod indulserat, non sine ratione prorogationis in primordio, et pastinationis in ultimo. Semper initia laxantur, fines contrahuntur . Propterea sylvam quis instituit, et crescere sinit, ut tempore suo caedat. Sylva erit vetus dispositio, quae ab Evangelio novo deputatur, in quo et (Matth. XXI) securis ad radices arboris posita est. Sic et oculum pro oculo, et dentem pro dente, jam senuit, ex quo juvenuit (Rom. XII, 17) malum pro malo nemo reddat. Puto autem etiam in humanas constitutiones atque decreta posteriora pristinis praevalere.