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A few words are necessary to explain the scope and aim of this remarkable treatise. It is not the work of one who held a brief for monasticism. Gregory deals with the celibate life in a different way from other Catholic writers upon this theme. Athanasius and Basil both saw in it the means of exhibiting to the world the Christian life definitely founded on the orthodox faith; and, for each celibate himself, this visible imitation of Christ would be more concentrated, when secular distractions and dissipations had been put aside for ever. Their aims were entirely moral and ecclesiastical. But Gregory deals with the entire human development in things spiritual. He has given the history of the struggle for moral and intellectual perfection, and the conditions of its success. He had his own inner Christian experience, the result of a recluse youth, on the one hand; he had the systems of heathen and Christian philosophy on the other. The ideal life that he has sketched is as lofty in its aspiration as the latter, and is couched in philosophic rather than in Scriptural language; but its scientific ground-work is entirely peculiar to himself. That groundwork is briefly this; spirit must be freed, so as to be drawn to the Divine Spirit; and to be so freed a “virginity” of the soul is necessary. He comes in this way to blame marriage, because in most of the marriages that he has known, this virginity of the soul is conspicuously absent. But he does not blame the married state in itself; as he himself distinctly tells us. The virginity he seeks may exist even there; and it is not by any means the same thing as celibacy. It is disengagedness of heart; and is, as many passages in this treatise indicate, identical with philosophy, whose higher manifestations had long ago been defined as Love, called forth by the sight of the immaterial Beauty. Where this sight is not interrupted, or not treated with indifference, there Virginity exists. With Gregory philosophy had become Life, and it is virginity that keeps it so, and therein keeps it from being lost. Another word with which Gregory identified virginity is “incorruptibility,” in language sometimes which recalls the lines—
“What, what is Virtue, but repose of mind?
A pure ethereal calm that knows no storm,
Above the reach of wild ambition’s wind,
Above the passions that this world deform,
And torture man, a proud malignant worm.”
Yet no one would imagine that here the poet, any more than S. Paul in Ephes. vi. 24 (see p. 343, note 3), meant celibacy per se. But it may be asked, how came Gregory to use the word Virginity at all for pure disengagement of soul? The answer seems to be, that he was very fond of metaphors and elaborate comparisons, ever since the days that he was a student of Rhetoric; this treatise itself is full of similes from nature, and they are not so much poetry or rhetoric, as necessary means of bringing his meaning vividly before readers. Virginity, then, is one of these bold and telling figures; and in his hands it is a very suggestive metaphor; though certainly at times it runs away with him. The accusation, then, that when he identifies Piety and Virginity, he makes the former consist in a mere externality, is unfounded. He uses the one word for the other without apprising us that it is a metaphor, and he omits to give any dietary rules by which this virginity is secured. Therefore he appears to mean celibacy. But on the other hand no arguments can be drawn from this treatise against the monastic life; only Gregory is busied with other matters. Rather, if the actual marriages of his time are such as he describes, it is a silent witness to the reasonableness, if not to the necessity, of such a life within the church. For this view of virginity as solving the question of Gregory’s supposed marriage, see Prolegomena, p. 3.
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Introduction.
The object of this treatise is to create in its readers a passion for the life according to excellence. There are many distractions, to use the word of the Divine Apostle, incident to the secular life; and so this treatise would suggest, as a necessary door of entrance to the holier life, the calling of Virginity; seeing that, while it is not easy in the entanglements of this secular life to find quiet for that of Divine contemplation, those on the other hand who have bid farewell to its troubles can with promptitude, and without distraction, pursue assiduously their higher studies. Now, whereas all advice is in itself weak, and mere words of exhortation will not make the task of recommending what is beneficial easier to any one, unless he has first given a noble aspect to that which he urges on his hearer, this discourse will accordingly begin with the praises of Virginity; the exhortation will come at the end; moreover, as the beauty in anything gains lustre by the contrast with its opposite, it is requisite that some mention should be made of the vexations of everyday life. Then it will be quite in the plan of this work to introduce a sketch of the contemplative life, and to prove the impossibility of any one attaining it who feel’s the world’s anxieties. In the devotee bodily desire has become weak; and so there will follow an inquiry as to the true object of desire, for which (and which only) we have received from our Maker our power of desiring. When this has received all possible illustration, it will seem to follow naturally that we should consider some method to attain it; and the true virginity, which is free from any stain of sin, will be found to fit such a purpose. So all the intermediate part of the discourse, while it seems to look elsewhere, will be really tending to the praises of this virginity. All the particular rules obeyed by the followers of this high calling will, to avoid prolixity, be omitted here; the exhortation in the discourse will be introduced only in general terms, and for cases of wide application; but, in a way, particulars will be here included, and so nothing important will be overlooked, while prolixity is avoided. Each of us, too, is inclined to embrace some course of life with the greater enthusiasm, when he sees personalities who have already gained distinction in it; we have therefore made the requisite mention of saints who have gained their glory in celibacy. But further than this; the examples we have in biographies cannot stimulate to the attainment of excellence, so much as a living voice and an example which is still working for good; and so we have alluded to that most godly bishop, our father in God, who himself alone could be the master in such instructions. He will not indeed be mentioned by name, but by certain indications we shall say in cipher that he is meant. Thus, too, future readers will not think our advice unmeaning, when the candidate for this life is told to school himself by recent masters. But let them first fix their attention only on this: what such a master ought to be; then let them choose for their guidance those who have at any time by God’s grace been raised up to be champions of this system of excellence; for either they will find what they seek, or at all events will be no longer ignorant what it ought to be.