CHAP.III. of their religion. But the monks and virgins that Year after had professed perpetual virginity, did at that time (as has been usual ever since) wear a peculiar habit, as a token of their profession.

the apo

stles.

Of which if any one doubt, it must be one that has never read any thing in St. Hierome: for he, being given to an overweening opinion of that way, mentions it with great eulogiums on every turn. And as he calls the persons, servos Christi, and Christo sacratos, servants of Christ,' and 'consecrated to Christ' and the virgins, virgines Dei, God's virgins,' (as if married people did not belong to God or Christ at all:) so, what is most to our purpose, he commonly calls that peculiar sort of coat that the virgins or nuns wore, Christi tunicam, the coat or garment of Christ.' And the veil, flammeum Christi, the veil of Christ.' Of each of which I will give one instance.

6

In his epitaphium, or funeral oration, in praise of Paullab, he recounts how desirous she had been in her lifetime that her children, and those that belonged to her, should take on them that habit and profession of renouncing the world, and leading a single life, as she had done that of a widow; and how she had in great measure her desire: for besides that Eustochium her daughter was then a professed virgin, her granddaughter also, by her only son Toxotius, being then a child, was, by her parents, Christi flammeo reservata, designed to

And in his letter to Eustochiume, the subject whereof is, de virginitate servanda, to exhort her to continue constant and unstained in her purpose b Epist. 27. [108. ed. Vallars.] c Epist. 22. [22.]

stles.

of perpetual virginity, he says, It is not fitting, CHAP.III. when one has taken hold of the plough, to look Year after back; nor being in the field, to return home;' the aponec post Christi tunicam ad tollendum aliud vesti⚫mentum tecto descendere:'' nor after one has put ⚫ on the coat of Christ, to come down from the roof to take any other garment.'

Since these expressions are the very same with those that he used before of himself; it is probable that those also are to be understood of the monk's habit or at least, it is not at all necessary that they must be understood of his baptism at Rome. And if they be not, then there remains no kind of ground to doubt of his being baptized at Stridon in infancy,as other Christian children were. For neither Erasmus, nor any of those that have followed him, have brought any other proof but these words; and had it not been for them, no man had ever had such a surmise.

III. Baronius does indeed say, that after he was baptized, he presently reformed his life, which before he had led in some lewdness: and whereas he had lost the first virginity, he kept undefiled that which he calls the second, which is after baptism"."

If this were true, or could be proved, the question were at an end. But there seems to be no more ground for it than that Baronius, having first taken for granted from Erasmus' conjecture that he was baptized at man's age, thought it more decent to lay that fornication, of which he is known to be guilty, rather before his baptism than after.

The tract of St. Hierome to which he refers for

d Ad ann. 372.

Year after the apo

stles.

CHAP.III. the proof of this, is his Apology made for his 'books that he had wrote against Jovinian.' In which there is indeed mention of those two sorts ' of virginity,' and there is also a confession of his own loss of virginity. But it is in several clauses or paragraphs that he mentions these two things ; and not so as to affirm, or intimate that he could claim, either of the said sorts of virginity himself. I think not; yet it may be proper to lay before the reader the places themselves.

He had been accused by a great many, that in the said books against Jovinian he had so excessively commended virginity, that he had in some expressions represented all marriage as sinful; for which accusation he had indeed given too much occasion. Yet he vindicates and explains the places excepted against as well as he can. And then says,

6

This therefore I protest, and make it my last ' declaration, that I did not then condemn marriage, nor do now condemn it. Virginity I do ' extol to the sky; not that I am possessed of it, but 'that I the more admire a thing that I myself have ' not. It is an ingenuous and modest confession to 'commend highly that in others which one has not 'one's self. Must not I, because being of a gross 'body I am fain to go on the ground, admire that faculty that the birds have of flying in the air; ' and envy the pigeon, which

'Radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas.'

. With stretched out wings glides through the yielding sky?'

'Let no man deceive himself: nor let him undo

' himself by hearkening to a soothing flatterer. The first virginity is that which is from one's birth: the second is that which is from one's second

⚫ birth. It is none of my saying, it is an old rule:CHAP.III. • No man can serve two masters, the flesh and the year after

stles.

spirit. The flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the apothe spirit against the flesh. These are contrary one to the other, that we cannot do the things we • would. When any thing in my book seems ⚫ severe, regard not my words, but the scripture • from which the words are taken. Christ is a virgin. The mother of our virgin Lord is a vir• gin,' &c.

Here, after he had confessed and apologized for himself, he passes to the other theme of commending virginity, and shewing the inconveniences of an incumbered and secular state. Here is nothing affirmed that he himself had either of the two sorts of virginity. And if any one judge, as Baronius seems to have done, that the chain of thought leads one to think he meant so; that conjecture will be much overbalanced by what he says plainly and expressly of his own case in another places, where he speaks of his ill life, and aggravates the guilt of it as being the defiling of his baptism. For commenting on that expression of Isaiah concerning himself, that he was a man of unclean lips, he says, 'He as being a just man had sinned only in word, and therefore had only unclean lips, not a ⚫ foul conscience. But I, as using my eyes to lust, and being offended by my hand, and sinning by my foot, and all my limbs, have every thing unclean. And because having been once baptized - with the Spirit, I have defiled my garments again ;

• Explanatio Visionis Isaiæ, Epist. 142. [Ep. 18. sect. 11. ed. Vailars.]

CHAP.III. I deserve the second baptism, which is that

'fire.'

It was some great and mortal sin that he speak of, (for they do not use to speak so of sins of daily incursion,) and we read of no such that he was guilty of, but his fornication. His words also are such as to particularize that.

And besides, he professes in a great many places, (in the foresaid letter to Damasus for one,) that he undertook the monk's life, as a state of voluntary penance for his sins; whereas they that in those times were baptized in their adult age, would have been counted greatly to undervalue the grace of baptism, if they had thought any such thing necessary for the sins they had committed before. always speak of baptism as giving a person a free, total, and absolute discharge from all guilt of sin, original or actual, before that time.

They

IV. One thing that will stick as an objection in the minds of those that are acquainted with the ecclesiastical discipline of that age, is this; that if he had been baptized in infancy, or any time before his fornication; that sin being after his baptism, would have rendered him incapable of holy orders. 225. Because the canons of that time, those of Nice, 205. those of Eliberis", and those of Neocæsarea1, as also Can. Apostol. 61. (als. 53.) do enact, that if any one after his baptism did fall into fornication, or any other of the great crimes; such a man, though he might by penance be restored to laycommunion, must never be ordained to the holy functions. And so strict it was, that if such an b Can. 30.

214.

Epist. 61, 58, &c. [16.]

i Can 9, 10.

* Can. 9, 10.