Sacred Texts  Christianity  Early Church Fathers  Index  Previous  Next 

Chapter XXI.—Evils of Adultery.

“But why, it is said, if a man is ignorant of his wife’s being an adulteress, is he not indignant, enraged, distracted? why does he not make war?  Thus these things are not evil by nature, but the unreasonable opinion of men make them terrible.  But I say, that even if these dreadful things do not occur, it is usual for a woman, through association with an adulterer, either to forsake her husband, or if she continue to live with him, to plot against him, or to bestow upon the adulterer the goods procured by the labour of her husband; and having conceived by the adulterer while her husband is absent, to attempt the destruction of that which is in her womb, through shame of conviction, and so to become a child-murderer; or even, while destroying it, to be destroyed along with it.  But if while her husband is at home she conceives by the adulterer and bears a child, the child when he grows up does not know his father, and thinks that he is his father who is not; and thus he who is not the father, at his death leaves his substance to the child of another.  And how many other evils naturally spring from adultery!  And the secret evils we do not know.  For as the mad dog destroys all that he touches, infecting them with the unseen madness, so also the hidden evil of adultery, though it be not known, effects the cutting off of posterity.