Miscellanies 3.12.80

Again, discussing the law and using allegory, he says: “For the married woman is bound by law to her living husband,” and so on. And again: “A wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if he dies, she is free to be married, only in the Lord. But she is happier if she remains as she is, in my judgment.” In the first passage he says, “You were put to death to the law,” not to marriage, “so that you might belong to another, to him who was raised from the dead,” as bride and church; and she must be pure both from inner thoughts contrary to the truth and from those who tempt from outside, that is, those who follow the heresies and persuade her to commit fornication away from her one husband, the Almighty God; so that we may not, as the serpent deceived Eve, who is called Life, transgress the commandments through the greedy cunning of the heresies. The second passage establishes monogamy. For we must not suppose, as some have explained it, that the binding of a woman to a man signifies the entanglement of flesh with corruption; for he accuses the invention of godless men who plainly attribute the discovery of marriage to the devil, by which the lawgiver is in danger of being blasphemed.