4. Lo, there is your good compared to that good, which the Apostle calls his own, if faith be present: yea, rather, because faith is present. Short is this teaching, yet not on this account to be despised, because it is short; but on this account to be retained the more easily and the more dearly, in that in shortness it is not cheap. For it is not every kind of good soever, which the Apostle would here set forth, which he hath unambiguously placed above the faith of married women. But how great good the faith of married women, that is, of Christian and religious women joined in marriage, hath, may be understood from this, that, when he was giving charge for the avoiding of fornication, wherein assuredly he was addressing married persons also, he saith, “Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ?”7    1 Cor. vi. 15 So great then is the good of faithful marriage, that even the very members are (members) of Christ. But, forasmuch as the good of widowed continence is better than this good, the purpose of this profession is, not that a catholic widow be any thing more than a member of Christ, but that she have a better place, than a married woman, among the members of Christ. Forsooth the same Apostle says, “For, as in one body we have many members, but all members have not the same course of action; so being many we are one body in Christ, and each members one of another: having gifts diverse according unto the grace, which hath been given unto us.”8    Rom. xii. 4–6

CAPUT III.

4. Bonum viduitatis majus quam conjugii, quod tamen vere bonum. Conjugii fides, et alia ejus bona, licet viduitate minora. Ecce est bonum tuum ei bono comparatum, quod dicit Apostolus suum, si fides adest; imo quia fides adest. Brevis est ista doctrina, nec ideo contemnenda, quia brevis: sed ideo facilius et charius tenenda, quia in brevitate non vilis. Non enim qualecumque bonum hic commendaret Apostolus, quod fidei nuptarum sine ulla ambiguitate praeposuit. Quantum autem bonum habeat nuptarum fides, id est, christianarum et religiosarum conjugatarum, hinc intelligi potest, quod cum de fugienda fornicatione praeciperet, ubi utique et conjugatos alloquebatur, Nescitis, inquit, quia corpora vestra membra sunt Christi (Id. VI, 19). Tantum ergo bonum est fidelis conjugii, ut etiam ipsa membra sint Christi. Hoc autem bono quoniam melius est bonum continentiae vidualis, non hac professione id agitur, ut aliquid plus sit catholica vidua quam membrum Christi; sed ut meliorem quam conjugata locum habeat inter membra Christi. Dicit quippe idem apostolus: Sicut enim in uno corpore 0433 multa membra habemus, omnia autem membra non eosdem actus habent; ita multi unum corpus sumus in Christo, singuli autem alter alterius membra : habentes dona diversa secundum gratiam quae data est nobis (Rom. XII, 46).