Isidore of Pelusium→Alypius, scholastic (lawyer)|isidore pelusium
From: Isidore of Pelusium, monk
To: Alypius the Scholastic
Date: ~410 AD
Context: Isidore lays out the Christian hierarchy of the three states of life, ranking them by their closeness to God.
Virginity is the most divine and supernatural of the three states; lawful marriage is honorable; fornication is lawless. Accordingly, virginity belongs to heaven; lawful marriage to the earth; and fornication does not belong anywhere that should be inhabited.
This is the teaching I have heard from those who have gone before us, and I find it persuasive. The man who commits fornication calls "my own" what is not his and never can be. The man who is rightly married honors the order God has placed in creation. The virgin, however, has not merely kept a rule — he or she has died with Christ and now lives a life the flesh cannot explain. That life, as someone has said, is already immortal here — not dying now, and to be vivified even further there.
Context:Isidore lays out the Christian hierarchy of the three states of life, ranking them by their closeness to God.
Virginity is the most divine and supernatural of the three states; lawful marriage is honorable; fornication is lawless. Accordingly, virginity belongs to heaven; lawful marriage to the earth; and fornication does not belong anywhere that should be inhabited.
This is the teaching I have heard from those who have gone before us, and I find it persuasive. The man who commits fornication calls "my own" what is not his and never can be. The man who is rightly married honors the order God has placed in creation. The virgin, however, has not merely kept a rule — he or she has died with Christ and now lives a life the flesh cannot explain. That life, as someone has said, is already immortal here — not dying now, and to be vivified even further there.
Modern English rendering for readability. See the 19th-century translation or original Latin/Greek for scholarly use.