Nicene and Post-Nicene Church Fathers Series 2 - The Still Small ...

To a fallen virgin.
Letter XLVI. 2108
1. Now is the time to quote the words of the prophet and to say, “Oh that my head were
waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of
the daughter of my people.” 2109 Though they are wrapped in profound silence and lie
stunned by their misfortune, robbed of all sense of feeling by the fatal blow, I at all events
must not let such a fall go unlamented. If, to Jeremiah, it seemed that those whose bodies
had been wounded in war, were worthy of innumerable lamentations, what shall be said of
such a disaster of souls? “My slain men,” it is said, “are not slain with the sword, nor dead
in battle.” 2110 But I am bewailing the sting of the real death, the grievousness of sin and the
fiery darts of the wicked one, which have savagely set on fire souls as well as bodies. Truly
God’s laws would groan aloud on seeing so great a pollution on the earth. They have pronounced
their prohibition of old “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife”; 2111 and
through the holy gospels they say that “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her,
hath committed adultery already with her in his heart.” 2112 Now they see the bride of the
Lord herself, whose head is Christ, boldly committing adultery. 2113 So too would groan
the companies 2114 of the Saints. Phinehas, the zealous, because he can now no more take
his spear into his hands and avenge the outrage on the bodies; and John the Baptist, because
he cannot quit the realms above, as in his life he left the wilderness, to hasten to convict
iniquity, and if he must suffer for the deed, rather lose his head than his freedom to speak.
But, peradventure, like the blessed Abel, he too though dead yet speaks to us, 2115 and now
exclaims, more loudly than John of old concerning Herodias, “It is not lawful for thee to
have her.” 2116 For even if the body of John in obedience to the law of nature has received
the sentence of God, and his tongue is silent, yet “the word of God is not bound.” 2117 John,
when he saw the wedlock of a fellow servant set at nought, was bold to rebuke even to the
2108 Placed with the preceding.
2109 Jer. ix. 1.
2110 Is. xxii. 2.
2111 Deut. v. 21.
2112 Matt. v. 28.
2113 cf. Letter ccxvii. § 60.
2114 Τάγματα, with two mss. The alternative reading is πνεύματα.
2115 cf. Heb. xi. 4.
2116 Matt. xiv. 4.
2117 2 Tim. ii. 9.
To a fallen virgin.
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