not in effeminacy, but in subdued manliness. But such behavior towards any woman except a wife would be disgraceful. This is a ques- tion in good manners, which is referred to only in case some stern advocate of insensi- bility should find fault with the holy man even for playing with his wife. For if these men without humanity see a sedate man chat- ting playfully with children that he may adapt himself to the childish understanding with kindly sympathy, they think that he is insane; forgetting that they themselves were once children, or unthankful for their maturity. The typical meaning, as regards Christ and His Church, which is to be found in this great patriarch playing with his wife, and in the conjugal relation being thus discovered, will be seen by every one who, to avoid offending the Church by erroneous doctrine, carefully studies in Scripture the secret of the Church's Bridegroom. He will find that the Husband of the Church concealed for a time in the form of a servant the majesty in which He was equal to the Father, as being in the form of God, that feeble humanity might be capable of union with Flim, and that so He might ac- commodate Himself to His spouse. So far from being absurd, it has a symbolic suitableness that the prophet of God should use a playfulness which is of the flesh to meet the affection of his wife, as the Word of God Himself became flesh that He might dwell among us.
47. Again, Jacob the son of Isaac is charged with having committed a great crime because he had four wives. But here there is no ground for a criminal accusation: for a plurality of wives was no crime when it was the custom; and it is a crime now, because it is no longer the custom. There are sins against nature, and sins against custom, and sins against the laws. In which, then, of these senses did Jacob sin in having a plural- ity of wives? As regards nature, he used the women not for sensual gratification, but for the procreation of children. For custom, this was the common practice at that time in those countries. And for the laws, no prohibition existed. The only reason of its being a crime now to do this, is because custom and the laws forbid it. Whoever despises these re- straints, even though he uses his wives only to get children, still commits sin, and does an injury to human society itself, for the sake of which it is that the procreation of children is required. In the present altered state of customs and laws, men can have no pleasure in a plurality of wives, except from an excess of lust; and so the mistake arises of suppos- ing that no one could ever have had mnny 290 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
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wives but from sensuality and the veliemence of sinful desires. Unable to form an idea of men whose force of mind is beyond their con- ception, they compare themselves with them- selves, as the apostle says,' and so make mis- takes. Conscious that, in their intercourse lliough with one wife only, they are often in- lluenced by mere animal passion instead of an intelligent motive, they think it an obvious inference that, if the limits of moderation are not observed where there is only one wife, the infirmity must be aggravated where there are more than one.
48. But those who have not the virtues of temperance must not be allowed to judge of the conduct of holy men, any more than those in fever of the sweetness and wholesomeness of food. Nourishment must be provided not by the dictates of the sickly taste, but rather i)y the judgment and direction of health, so as to cure the sickness. If our critics, then, wish to attain not a spurious and affected, but a genuine and sound moral health, let them find a cure in believing the Scripture record, that the honorable name of saint is given not without reason to men who had several wives; and that the reason is this, that the mind can exercise such control over the flesh as not to allow the appetite implanted in our nature by Providence to go beyond the limits of delib- erate intention. By a similar misunderstand- ing, this criticism, which consists rather in dishonest slander than in honest judgment, might accuse the holy apostles too of preach- ing the gospel to so many people, not from the desire of begetting children to eternal life, but from the love of human praise. There was no lack of renown to these our fathers in the gospel, for their praise was spread in numerous tongues through the churches of Christ. In fact, no greater honor and glory could have been paid by men to their fellgw-creatures. It was the sinful desire for this glory in the Church which led the reprobate Simon in his blindness to wish to purchase for money what was freely be- stowed on the apostles by divine grace. "= There must have been this desire of glory in the man whom the Lord in the Gospel checks in his desire to follow Him, saying, " The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man hath not where to lay His Head."^ The Lord saw that his mind was darkened by false appear- ances and elated by sudden emotion, and that there was no ground of faith to afford a lodg- ing to the Teacher of humility; for in Christ's discipleship the man sought not Christ's I 2 Cor. X. 12 2 Acts viii. 18-20.
3 Matt. viii. 20.
grace, but his own glory. By this love of glory those were led away whom the Apostle Paul characterizes as preaching Christ not sincerely, but of contention and envy; and yet the apostle rejoices in their preaching, knowing that it might happen that, while the preachers gratified their desire for human praise, believers might be born among their hearers, — not as the result of the envious feeling which made them wish to rival or sur- pass the fame of the apostles, but by means of the gospel which they preached, though not sincerely; so that God might bring good out of their evil. So a man may be induced to marry by sensual desire, and not to beget children; and yet a child may be born, a good work of God, due to the natural power, not to the misconduct of the parent. As, there- fore, the holy apostles were gratified when their doctrine met with acceptance from their hearers, not because they were greedy for praise, but because they desired to spread the truth; so the holy patriarchs in their con- jugal intercourse were actuated not by the love of pleasure, but by the intelligent desire for the continuance of their family. Thus the number of their hearers did not make the apostles ambitious; nor did the number of their wives make the patriarchs licentious.
But why defend the husbands, to whose character the divine word bears the highest testimony, when it appears that the wives themselves looked upon their connection with their husbands only as a means of getting sons? So, when they found themselves bar- ren, they gave their handmaids to their hus- bands; so that while the handmaids had the fleshly motherhood, the wives were mothers in intention.
49. Faustus makes a most groundless state- ment when he accuses the four women of quarreling like abandoned characters for the possession of their husband. Where Faus- tus read this I know not, unless it was in his own heart, as in a book of impious delusions, in which Faustus himself is seduced by that serpent with regard to whom the apostle feared for the Church, which he desired to present as a chaste virgin to Christ; lest, as the serpent had deceived Eve by his subtlety, so he should also corrupt their minds by turn- ing them away from the simplicity of Christ.* The Manichaeans are so fond of this serpent, that they assert that he did more good than harm. From him Faustus must have got his mind corrupted with the lies instilled into it, which he now reproduces in these infamous calumnies, and is even bold enough to put ,or. xi. 2, 3.
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291 down in writing. It is not true that one of the handmaids carried off Jacob from the other, or that they quarreled about possess- ing him. There was arrangement, because there was no licentious passion; and the law of conjugal authority was all the stronger that there was none of the lawlessness of fleshly desire. His being hired by one of his wives proves what is here said, in plain opposition to the libels of the Manichaeans. Why should one have hired him, unless by the arrange- ment he was to have gone in to the other? It does not follow that he would never have gone in to Leah unless she had hired him. He must have gone to her always in her turn, for he had many children by her; and in obedience to her he had children by her hand- maid, and afterwards, without any hiring, by herself. On this occasion it was Rachel's turn, so that she had the power so expressly mentioned in the New Testament by the apostle, ' ' The husband hath not power over his own body, but the wife."' Rachel had a bargain with her sister, and, being in her sister's debt, she referred her to Jacob, her own debtor. For the apostle uses this figure when he says, " Let the husband render unto the wife what is due."^ Rachel gave what was in her power as due from her husband, in return for what she had chosen to take from her sister.
50. If Jacob had been of such a character as Faustus in his incurable blindness supposes, and not a servant of righteousness rather than of concupiscence, would he not have been looking forward eagerly all day to the pleas- ure of passing the night with the more beau- tiful of his wives, whom he certainly loved more than the other, and for whom he paid the price of twice seven years of gratuitous service? How, then, at the close of the day, on his way to his beloved, could he have con- sented to be turned aside, if he had been such as the ignorant Manichseans represent him? Would he not have disregarded the wish of the women, and insisted upon going to the fair Rachel, who belonged to him that night not only as his lawful wife, but also as com- ing in regular order? He would thus have used his power as a husband, for the wife also has not power over her own body, but the husband; and having on this oc- casion the arrangement in their obedience in favor of the gratification of his love of beauty, he might have enforced his author- ity the more successfully. In that case it would be to the credit of the women, that while he thought of his own pleasure they ' I Cor. vii. 4.
2 I Cor. vii. 3.
contended about having a son. As it was, this virtuous man, in manly control of sen- sual appetite, thought more of what was due from him than to him, and instead of using his power for his own pleasure, consented to be only the debtor in this mutual obligation. So he consented to pay the debt to the person to whom she to whom it was due wished him to pay it. When, by this private bargain of his wives, Jacob was suddenly and unexpec- tedly forced to turn from the beautiful wife to the plain one, he did not give way either to anger or to disappointment, nor did he try to persuade his wives to let him have his own way; but, like a just husband and an intelli- gent parent, seeing his wives concerned about the production of children, which was all he himself desired in marriage, he thought it best to yield to their authority, in desiring that each should have a child: for, since all the children were his, his own authority was not impaired. As if he had said to them: Arrange as you please among yourselves which is to be the mother; it matters not to me, since in any case I am the father. This control over the appetites, and simple desire to beget children, Faustus would have been clever enough to see and approve, unless his mind had been corrupted by the shocking tenets of his sect, which lead him to find fault with everything in the Scripture, and, more- over, teach him to condemn as the greatest crime the procreation of children, which is the proper design of marriage.
51. Now, having defended the character of the patriarch, and refuted an accusation aris- ing from these detestable errors, let us avail ourselves of the opportunity of searching out the symbolical meaning, and let us knock with the reverence of faith, that the Lord may open to us the typical significance of the four wives of Jacob, of whom two were free, and two slaves. We see that, in the wife and bond-slaves of Abraham, the apostle under- stands the two Testaments. ^ But there, one represents each; here, the application does not suit so well, as there are two and two. There, also, the son of the bond-slave is dis- inherited; but here the sons of the slaves re- ceive the land of promise along with the sons of the free women: so that this type must have a different meaning.
52. Supposing that the two free wives point to the New Testament, by which we are called to liberty, what is the meaning of there being two? Perhaj^s ])ecause in Scripture, as the attentive reader will find, we are saiil to have two lives in the body of Christ, — or.e 3 Gal. iv. 22- 24.
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temporal, in which we suffer pain, and one eternal, in which we shall behold the blessed- ness of God. We see the one in the Lord's passion, and the other in His resurrection. The names of the women point to this mean- ing. It is said that Leah means Suffering, and Rachel the First Principle made visible, or the Word which makes the First Principle visible. The action, then, of our mortal hu- man life, in which we live by faith, doing many painful tasks without knowing what benefit may result from them to those in whom we are interested, is Leah, Jacob's first wife. And thus she is said to have had weak eyes. For the purposes of mortals are timid, and our plans uncertain. Again, the hope of the eternal contemplation of God, accompanied with a sure and delightful perception of truth, is Rachel. And on this account she is des- cribed as fair and well-formed. This is the beloved of every pious student, and for this he serves the grace of God, by which our sins, thoua:h like scarlet, are made white as snow.' For Laban means making white; and we read that Jacob served Laban for Rachel. = No man turns to serve righteousness, in subjec- tion to the grace of forgiveness, but that he may live in peace in the Word which makes visible the First Principle, or God; that is, he serves for Rachel, not for Leah. For what a man loves in the works of righteous- ness is not the toil of doing and suffering. No one desires this life for its own sake; as Jacob desired not Leah, who yet was brought to him, and became his wife, and the mother of children. Though she could not be loved of herself, the Lord made her be borne with as a step to Rachel; and then she came to be approved of on account of her children. Thus every useful servant of God, brought into His grace by which his sins are made white, has in his mind, and heart, and affec- tion, when he thus turns to God, nothing but the knowledge of wisdom. This we often ex- pect to attain as a reward for practising the seven precepts of the law which concern the love of our neighbor, that we injure no one: namely. Honor thy father and mother; Thou shalt not commit adultery; Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not bear false witness; Thou shalt not desire thy neighbor's wife; Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's property. When a man has obeyed these to the best of his ability, and, instead of the bright joys of truth which he desired and hoped for, finds in the darkness of the manifold trials of this world that he is bound to painful endurance, or has embraced Isa. i. ig 2 Gen. xxix. 17.
Leah instead of Rachel, if there is persever- ance in his love, he bears with the one in or- der to attain the other; and as if it were said to him, Serve seven other years for Rachel, he hears seven new commands, — to be poor m spirit, to be meek, to be a mourner, to hunger and thirst after righteousness, to be merciful, pure, and a peacemaker. ^ A man would desire, if it were possible, to obtain at once the joys of lovely and perfect wisdom, without the endurance of toil in action and suffering; but this is impossible in mortal life. This seems to be meant, when it is said to Jacob: " It is not the custom in our country to marry the younger before the elder."* The elder may very well mean the first in or- der of time. So, in the discipline of man, the toil of doing the work of righteousness precedes the delight of understanding the truth.
53. To this purpose it is written: "Thou hast desired wisdom; keep the command- ments, and the Lord shall give it thee. "^ The commandments are those concerning righteousness, and the righteousness is that which is by faith, surrounded with the un- certaiqty of temptations; so that understand- ing is the reward of a pious belief of what is The meaning I have "Thou hast desired wisdom; keep the commandments, and the Lord shall give it thee, "I find also in the passage, " Unless ye believe, ye shall not un derstand;" * showing that as righteousness is. by faith, understanding comes by wisdom Accordingly, in the case of those who eagerly demand evident truth, we must not condemn the desire, but regulate it, so that beginning with faitn it may proceed to the desired end through good works. The life of virtue is. one of toil; the end desired is unclouded wis- dom. Why should I believe, says one, what is not clearly proved? Let me hear some word which will disclose the first principle ofi all things. This is the one great craving ofi the rational soul in the pursuit of truth. And the answer is. What you desire is excellent, and well worthy of your love; but Leah is to be married first, and then Rachel. The pro-jj per effect of your eagerness is to lead you to^ submit to the right method, instead of rebel- ling against it; for without this method you cannot attain what you so eagerly long for. And when it is attained, the possession of the lovely form of knowledge will be in this world accompanied with the toils of righteousness.
For however clear and true our perception in this life may be of the unchangeable good, not yet understood, given to these words I' 1- 3-9- ■ 33- 4 Gen. xxix. 26. 6 Isa. vi:. 9, Vulg.
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293 the mortal body is still a weight on the mind, and the earthly tabernacle is a clog on the intellect in its manifold activity. The end, then, is one, luit many things must be gone through for the sake of it.
54. Thus Jacob has two free wives; for hoth are daughters of the remission of sins, mt of whitening, that is, of Laban. One is l')ved, the other is borne. But she that is borne is the most and the soonest fruitful, that she may be loved, if not for herself, at least for her children. For the toil of the righteous is specially fruitful in those whom they beget for the kingdom of God, by preaching the gospel amid many trials and temptations; and they call those their joy and crown' for whom they are in labors more abundantly, in stripes above measure, in deaths often, = — for whom they have fightings without and fears within. ^ Such births re- sult most easily and plentifully from the word of faith, the preaching of Christ crucified, which speaks also of His human nature as far as it can be easily understood, so as not to hurt the weak eyes of Leah. Rachel, again, with clear eye, is beside herself to < lod,-' and sees in the beginning the Word of God with God, and wishes to bring forth, but cannot; for who shall declare His generation? So the life devoted to contemplation, in order to see with no feeble mental eye things invis- ible to flesh, but understood by the things that are made, and to discern the ineffable manifestation of the eternal power and divin- ity of God, seeks leisure from all occupation, and is therefore barren. In this habit of re- tirement, where the fire of meditation burns bright, there is a want of sympathy with hu- man weakness, and with the need men have of our help in their calamities. This life also burns with the desire for children (for it wishes to teach what it knows, and not to go with the corruption of envy 5), and sees its sister-life fully occupied with work and with bringing forth; and it grieves that men run after that virtue which cares for their wants and weaknesses, instead of that which has a divine imperishable lesson to impart. This is what is meant when it is said, " Rachel en- vied her sister."* Moreover, as the pure in- tellectual perception of that which is not mat- ter, and so is not the object of the bodliy sense, cannot be expressed in words which si)ring from the flesh, the doctrine of wisdom prefers to get some lodging for divine truth in the mind by whatever material figures and illustrations occur, rather than to give up teaching these things; and thus Rachel pre- • Phil. iv.:.
4 2 Cor. V. l:; ferred that her husband should have children by her handmaid, rather than that she should be without any children. Bilhah, the name of her handmaid, is said to mean old; and so, even when we speak of the spiritual and unchangeable nature of God, ideas are sug- gested relating to the old life of the bodily senses.
55. Leah, too, got children by her hand- maid, from the desire of having a numerous family. Zilpah, her handmaid, is, interpreted, an open mouth. So Leah's handmaid repre- sents those who are spoken of in Scripture as engaging in the preaching of tlie gospel with open mouth, but not with open heart. Thus it is written of some: "This people honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me. "7 To such the apostle says: " Thou that preachest that a man should not steal, dost thou steal? Thou that sayest a man should not commit adultery, dost thou commit adultery?"^ But that even by this arrangement the free wife of Jacob, the type of labor or en- durance, might obtain children to be heirs of the kingdom, the Lord says: " What they say, do; but do not after their works. "5 And again, the apostolic life, when enduring imprison- ment, says: " Whether Christ is preached in pretence or in truth, I therein do rejoice, yea, and w'ill rejoice." '° It is the joy of the mother over her numerous family, though born of her handmaid.
56. In one instance Leah owed her becom- ing a mother to Rachel, who, in return for some mandrakes, allowed her husband to give her night to her sister. Some, I know, think that eating this fruit has the effect of making barren women productive, and that Rachel, from her desire for children, was thus bent on getting the fruit from her sister. But I should not agree to this, even had Rachel conceived at the time. As Leah then con- ceived, and, besides, had two other children before God opened Rachel's womb, there is no reason for supposing any such quality in the mandrake, without any experience to prove It. I will give my explanation; those better able than I may give a better. Though this fruit is not often met with, I had once, to my great satisfaction, on account of its con- nection with this passage of Scripture, an op- portunity of seeing it. I examined the fruit as carefully as I could, not with the help of any recondite knowledge of the nature of roots or the virtues of plants, but only as to what I or any one might learn from the sight, and smell, and taste. I thought it a nice- looking fruit, and sweet-smelling, but iny 294 THE WORKS OF ST. AUGUSTIN.
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