NPNF2-08. Basil: Letters and Select Works - Holy Bible Institute

To Amphilochius, concerning the Canons.cluded from service. The act committed without violence is not liable to punishment,whenever it has not been preceded by violation or robbery. The widow is independent, andto follow or not is in her own power. We must, therefore, pay no heed to excuses.XXXI. A woman whose husband has gone away and disappeared, and who marriesanother, before she has evidence of his death, commits adultery. Clerics who are guilty ofthe sin unto death 2712 are degraded from their order, but not excluded from the communionof the laity. Thou shalt not punish twice for the same fault. 2713XXXIII. Let an indictment for murder be preferred against the woman who gives birthto a child on the road and pays no attention to it.XXXIV. Women who had committed adultery, and confessed their fault through piety,or were in any way convicted, were not allowed by our fathers to be publicly exposed, thatwe might not cause their death after conviction. But they ordered that they should be excludedfrom communion till they had fulfilled their term of penance.XXXV. In the case of a man deserted by his wife, the cause of the desertion must betaken into account. If she appear to have abandoned him without reason, he is deservingof pardon, but the wife of punishment. Pardon will be given to him that he may communicatewith the Church.XXXVI. Soldiers’ wives who have married in their husbands’ absence will come underthe same principle as wives who, when their husbands have been on a journey, have notwaited their return. Their case, however, does admit of some concession on the ground ofthere being greater reason to suspect death.XXXVII. The man who marries after abducting another man’s wife will incur the chargeof adultery for the first case; but for the second will go free.XXXVIII. Girls who follow against their fathers’ will commit fornication; but if theirfathers are reconciled to them, the act seems to admit of a remedy. They are not howeverimmediately restored to communion, but are to be punished for three years.XXXIX. The woman who lives with an adulterer is an adulteress the whole time. 2714XL. The woman who yields to a man against her master’s will commits fornication; butif afterwards she accepts free marriage, she marries. The former case is fornication; thelatter marriage. The covenants of persons who are not independent have no validity.2712 St. Basil on Isaiah iv. calls sins wilfully committed after full knowledge “sins unto death.” But in thesame commentary he applies the same designation to sins which lead to hell. The sense to be applied to thephrase in Canon xxxii. is to be learnt, according to the Ben. note, from Canons lxix. and lxx., where a less punishmentis assigned to mere wilful sins unto death than in Canon xxxii.2713 Nahum i. 9, LXX.2714 Or, according to another reading, in every way.683